The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) hosted a fireside chat featuring authors Hongbin Li and Ruixue Jia, moderated by Yiqing Xu, to discuss their newly published book The Highest Exam: How the Gaokao Shapes China.

The discussion explored China's gaokao—the nationwide college entrance exam taken annually by over ten million students—which uniquely determines college admission entirely through test performance and a regional quota system. The authors presented research drawing from extensive surveys, historical analysis, economic data, and personal narrative to reveal how this centralized testing system functions as a centralize, hierarchical tournament serving the Chinese Communist Party's needs while driving economic growth. The conversation also addressed the gaokao's broader societal impacts, including how Chinese-American families' expectations shaped by this test-based system increasingly conflict with the holistic admissions approaches used by U.S. educational institutions.
 

Watch the Recorded Event

This article was originally written by Jikun Huang in Mandarin and published by Peking University. Read the original article here. 

Founding

The story of the China Center for Agricultural Policy (CCAP) started with my encounter with Scott Rozelle in the Philippines in 1988. Then a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, Scott attended an international conference hosted by Dr. Cristina David, my advisor at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). This chance encounter started our collaboration that has lasted 30 years and continues today. We both completed our graduate studies in 1990: Scott began teaching at Stanford University, while I started my postgraduate work at IRRI after receiving my degree from IRRI and the University of the Philippines, Los Baños (UPLB). 

Jikun Huang and Scott Rozelle.

Between 1990 and 1992, we submitted a joint project proposal to study China’s rice economy to the International Development Research Center (IDRC). I returned to China in 1992 and initiated the project with Scott at the National Rice Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). Besides producing many important findings, the project helped us discover a cohort of talented scholars, including Yongzhong Qian, Ting Zuo, and Ruifa Hu, who later became my Ph.D. advisee at Zhejiang Agricultural University. Scott and I have since become not only collaborators in research, but also mentors and friends to each other.

The agricultural economics project team in 1992.

The decision to establish CCAP was deeply informed by my experience at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). After being promoted to become the youngest principal investigator at CAAS in 1993, I joined IFPRI to conduct research on its 2020 Vision Initiative. During my time there, Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, proposed in his famous opinion piece that “China could starve the world in 2020.” I felt compelled to rebut his claim and, inspired by IFPRI’s framework for agricultural policy research, sought to establish a research institution for agricultural policy in China. My idea received support from Scott and Dr. Xigang Zhu, then director of the Institute of Agricultural Economics at CAAS. I also contacted Linxiu Zhang, my colleague at UPLB, and Ninghui Li, a collaborator of IFPRI, to enlist their support. When my decision finally reached Dr. Per Pinstrup-Andersen, then director of IFPRI, he felt surprised by my decision to return to China but excited by the prospect of my establishing a “mini-IFPRI” there.

I travelled back to China in August 1995 and started preparing for CCAP in September. Our first office was two small rooms on the first floor of an unassuming two-story building in the computation center of CAAS in Beijing. In the rooms were computers, files, and a laser printer I purchased in the U.S.– since then it had served us loyally for years, only retiring when we relocated out of CAAS. The team at the time included me, Linxiu, two graduate students, and a research assistant. With help from Scott and Songqing Jin, my assistant at the China National Rice Research Institute, CCAP’s work began in fall 1995. 

The first months at the office were sprinkled with many fun and memorable moments: I gave the students a budget of 500 CNY to buy a thermos so that we can drink hot water in the office; They brought back an electric kettle with a button-operated dispenser, a luxury item that turned out to be our most trusty office appliance. 

After about six months in the small office in the computation center, we relocated in the spring of 1996 to an office in the Institute of Agricultural Economics. The Institute offered a suite of four rooms to accommodate our team, which grew with the joining of new scholars, including Ruifa Hu and Ninghui Li. With newly acquired funding, we equipped our office with state-of-the-art infrastructure, complete with corner desks, swivel office chairs, and cubicle dividers. Even our logo, which we designed ourselves, stood out at the time for its creativity.

The center’s administrative structure was also innovative for its time. Thanks to support from my mentors and the senior agricultural economists at CAAS, like director Xigang Zhu and Dr. Fangquan Mei, the center remained financially independent from the Institute. Its staff received an annual salary, and its expenses were managed independently to allow for more efficient allocation. 

In May 1996, the center was officially named as the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy. Our first large-scale field research in rural China began that summer and lasted for over a month. For many of us, this was our first foray into standardized field research, and it left a lasting impression: Many of the children we surveyed dropped out of school due to poverty. In 1997, I proposed that we pool a research award the center had received and a proportion of our wage together to start a financial aid program for children struggling with poverty to stay in schools. The proposal was warmly welcomed by my colleagues and collaborators. On our behalf, education officials in Xingguo County in Jiangxi Province subsidized the education of children from low-income families in the county and purchased stationery for them. The program lasted 15 years until the government initiated its poverty-alleviation initiatives in the 2010s. Many of the beneficiaries attended college, and some even completed Ph.D. degrees.

CCAP’s work quickly accelerated after the establishment of the first Advisory Committee in 1997, with Scott as its chair and 12 renowned scholars from 10 countries, including Professor Yifu Lin at Peking University and Dr. Shenggen Fan at IFPRI, serving as members. In January 1998, we initiated a project on the challenges and strategies of China’s grain production in the 21st Century. Inspired by IFPRI’s framework, we focused our research on four areas: agricultural technology, food and agricultural economics, resource and environmental economics, and rural developmental economics. Our projects examined China’s agricultural technology and innovation, rice production, pesticide use and conservation, industrial policy, land rights and the labor market, the grain market and agricultural subsidies, water resources, and rural public goods.

As our projects grew, so did the number of late nights at the office. I was fortunate to have the company of my family in Beijing from the summer of 1996, while many colleagues split their time between conducting fieldwork in rural communities and cleaning data in Beijing. We often stayed up in the office, writing research reports until the security guard locked the gate to the building at midnight, and had to ask to be let out. On several memorable nights when even the guards had left, we resorted to exiting from a second-floor window and sliding down the tree outside.  

The team expanded, too. Dinghuan Hu and Zhenyu Sun joined in 1998; I invited Jintao Xu, who had just finished his studies in the U.S., to join after meeting him in Singapore in 1999; In 2000, Luping Li joined after graduating from UPLB. The center also enrolled over 30 graduate students between 1997 and 2000 and hired a growing team of dedicated administrative and research assistants to support them. Many of the assistants went on to pursue degrees at universities abroad. Besides Scott, the center also hosted international scholars like Don Antiporta, Carl Pray, Loren Brandt, Chunlai Chen, and students like Albert Park, Bryan Lohmar, and Xiaoyong Zhang. Outside of our research, we organized many gatherings and outings to bring the growing team closer together.

Our work soon paid off. To our pride, two projects were awarded by the Department of Agriculture for advancing agricultural technology between 1996 and 1999, and our center and I also received numerous awards for contributions to agricultural technology and China’s food security. 

The center’s first five years at CAAS laid the foundation for its development in the following 25 years; Despite the center being restructured as part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) later, the collaboration with CAAS continued, and its use of fieldwork to inform agricultural economics research still influences us today.
 

Development    

The years between 2000 and 2015 saw CCAP expand from a team of several researchers to one of Asia’s premier agricultural economics research institutions. In 1999 and 2000, CCAP’s work drew attention from officials spearheading CAS’s intellectual innovation initiative. With support from Scott, we felt prepared to contribute to this initiative. In September 2000, the two institutions reached a consensus that CCAP would be restructured as part of the CAS, while individual researchers who chose to remain at CAAS did so. Soon, in October, my students and assistant helped pack up my office supplies and files and shipped them to the new office in the CAS while I left town for my university reunion. When I returned to Beijing, I was astonished to find my familiar desk, chair, bookshelves, and even air conditioner shipped to my new office. When I asked my assistants why they went to the great lengths to move these large pieces of furniture, they simply replied that they had seen me and the team work hard to raise the funds for these “assets” – how could they just be thrown away? We had barely settled into our new office when new opportunities for research and exchange unfolded before us. In November 2011, CCAP co-hosted a delegation from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) at the “CHINA–IIASA DAY” conference with support from China’s Academy of Labor and Social Security.

The tenth anniversary of CCAP coincided with the mid-autumn festival of 2005. It was celebrated with a conference that included three days of memorable events and fruitful exchange: Scott and Jintao invited colleagues working in many different countries, while I extended invitations to the center’s long-time advisors and collaborators in China. On the first day, we had the honor to hear from Jiayang Li, the vice president of the CAS, and Joachim von Braun, the director of IFPRI. CAS academician Guofang Shen and Professor Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University also spoke about their work on sustainable development. The focus of the second day was agricultural economics: Mr. Xiwen Chen unpacked China’s agricultural finance policy on behalf of finance officials; Scott Rozelle, Tushaar Shah, then chief scientist at the International Water Management Institute, and I each reported our ongoing research; The presentations entailed heated discussions among the guests, including officials from China’s State Council and National Reform and Development Commission. The third day was reserved for celebration, culminating with gatherings and performances by dancers from the logging communities in the Northeast Forest Area.

CCAP's Board of Academic Advisors at the at CCAP's 10th anniversary celebration held on September 25, 2005.

As part of the CAS, CCAP systematically expanded its areas of research: We have deepened our work on seed technology and policy while extending into bioenergy innovation and seed-industry governance; We continued to develop a analytics system to support decision-making on agricultural industrial policies, while also tackling emerging topics like WTO and China’s food security, price-subsidies, and value-chain restructuring; We leveraged our long-standing strengths in water and forest sustainability research to expand into interdisciplinary projects on land management, pollution control, climate-change adaptation, and ecological compensation; Finally, we applied our research in rural public services provision, governance, and urban–rural integration. Part of this effort were the groundbreaking projects on human capital development like the Rural Education Action Program in collaboration with Stanford.

During this period, we initiated 300 research projects in our areas of focus and published over 1,000 manuscripts in academic journals both in China and abroad. Since 2003, we have submitted over 100 reports via the CAS to the central government, over 60 of which led to feedback and discussion that directly informed China’s agricultural policy. Since about 2007, CCAP has ranked among the most influential agricultural economics research institutions in Asia. 

Fieldwork during CCAP’s time as part of the CAS.

CCAP also became a cradle for agricultural economists: Two of our members (myself included) were elected to The World Academy of Sciences for the Advancement of Science in Developing Countries (TWAS), four were awarded by the Chinese government for outstanding contributions to scientific research, in addition to numerous awards both at home and abroad. Between 2001 and 2015, we welcomed numerous post-doctorate scholars and visiting scholars, while several Ph.D. students chose to remain on the team as researchers after receiving their degrees. Meanwhile, Jintao Xu left for the School of the Environment at Peking University (PKU) and later its National School of Development, Ran Tao joined the faculty of Renmin University, and numerous other team members joined the faculty of universities across China to advance their work. 

A group photo during a CCAP fieldwork excursion in 2012. Researchers featured include current team members of the Rrural Education Action Program: Scott Rozelle, Matthew Boswell, Alexis Medina, and Huan Wang.

We also developed a rigorous program for training graduate students: Besides studying agricultural economics, students at CCAP were required to complete advanced coursework in microeconomics, econometrics, and other core topics in economics at PKU. After completing their coursework, students conducted an average of three months of fieldwork in rural China every year to advance their dissertation research. For this, we have become affectionately known as “the national census team,” and being part of the Huang lab carried immense respect in the field of agricultural economics.

The year 2015 was particularly significant for CCAP. Then in its 20th year, the center faced difficult decisions about its future directions as the CAS underwent major restructuring. I consulted with Scott, Linxiu, and presented our past work and current vision at the 29th Conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists in Milan, Italy. The resulting consensus was that, for CCAP to maintain its independence and development trajectory, it needed a new institution and platform. Eventually, CCAP found its new home at Peking University, marking the end of 15 years of rapid yet steady development with support from the CAS and the beginning of a new chapter.

Exploration

The decision to join Peking University (PKU) was motivated by intensifying competition in China’s academia and changing performance benchmarks for promotion within the CAS. We had always found the academic ecosystem at PKU ideal for CCAP’s development, but it was not until I got in touch with the administration that I realized how competitive and rigorous PKU’s talent acquisition process was: Each member of the center underwent an individual review process, in which we defended our work in front of a panel of reviewers. Surprisingly, despite most of us being economists, our first round of reviews was led by a panel of natural scientists and engineers, and none of us passed our review; I then requested an unprecedented second round of reviews by economics and social scientists who were more familiar with our work. Eventually, all members of CCAP had passed their reviews and relocated to PKU by the end of 2016, except for two colleagues, Linxiu and Xiangzheng, who chose to remain at the Institute of Geography in the CAS.

Scott Rozelle and Jikun Huang.

At PKU, CCAP changed its name from the “Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy” to the “China Center for Agricultural Policy.” While the acronym remained the same, the name change reflected the shift in our focus from China’s agriculture to agricultural policy in the global South. To achieve this, we expanded the agricultural economics curriculum at PKU, a change anticipated by the field. We also closely integrated our research with policymaking. Specifically, we furthered our research on plant breeding and the seed industry to inform the transition to digital agriculture and governance in rural communities; We situated our food security research within China’s geopolitical context while also giving more attention to sustainable agriculture; And we drew on our previous works on human capital development in rural China to study the theory and policies of rural transformation in emerging economies.

Like in any other stage of CCAP’s journey, talent has remained the driving force of our work. CCAP welcomed five research scholars between 2021 and 2025, while hosting 43 Ph.D. students and 41 post-doctoral scholars. We also welcomed 13 visiting scholars from our partner institutions, many of whom have become leading figures in agricultural economics. Notably, our collaboration with Jiangxi Agricultural University also took off through the exchange of faculty and students and the joint development of data and research infrastructure. In 2021, I transitioned into an advisory role as the honorary director of CCAP, and Jinxia Wang succeeded the role of director and was supported by two assistant directors, Chengfang Liu and Lingling Hou. The new leadership embodies the very international vision and innovative thinking that have come to define CCAP.

In the past ten years, CCAP’s work has made notable contributions to the field. More than 400 of our 500 publications since 2016 were included in the Science Citation Index / Social Sciences Citation Index; We have published in not only agricultural economics journals like the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE) and Food Policy, but also natural science journals like Nature, Nature Plants, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Communications, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and many other academic journals in economics, environmental studies, and public health. We established a good reputation in the global agricultural economics community, too: CCAP has been ranked among the top research institutions in Asia by RePEc/IDEAS for nine consecutive years, and five of our team members have been named Highly Cited Scholars by Elsevier. Meanwhile, the Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences at PKU, a joint effort headed by CCAP and supported by 16 academic departments across the university, has become a globally renowned think tank for rural development since its founding in 2018. The institute focuses on applied research on rural development and agricultural policy and has contributed over 100 proposals to the government. CCAP was also part of the scientific group in the United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021 and organized the G20 expert working group on grain security and sustainable agriculture in Argentina in 2018 and again in Indonesia in 2022. The 2024 PKU Forum on Rural Revitalization, organized by CCAP, received a total of six million visits from in-person and online audiences, highlighting the influence of our work on public conversations around rural development.

New Horizons

For me, CCAP’s accomplishments today are thanks to five reasons. The first is our commitment to institutional environments that support principal investigators (PIs) in their independent research and innovation. The second is our commitment to facts and integrity, embodied by our tradition of gaining insights from rigorous fieldwork and drawing conclusions from data. The third is collaboration, which includes establishing rapport with our research participants, teamwork between assistants and PIs to collect data, and constructive debate between students and their mentors to further our understanding. The fourth is the rigorous training our students and young scholars receive, which not only enhances their understanding of theory and methods but also cultivates their commitment to research integrity. The fifth and final reason is our effort to use research to inform policymaking and make tangible contributions to rural development.

In the future, CCAP plans to leverage the interdisciplinary approach of PKU to train researchers who can advance the work of the center and transform the discipline of agricultural economics. As a think tank, we are confident that through enhancing our capacity for data collection and analysis, we can contribute solutions to global sustainable development.

The "Meet Our Researchers" series showcases the incredible scholars at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Through engaging interviews conducted by our undergraduate research assistants, we explore the journeys, passions, and insights of CDDRL’s faculty and researchers.

What role do middle or “auxiliary” powers — like India, Brazil, or Turkey — play in this evolving landscape of great power competition?

This is one of the biggest differences between today and the Cold War. Back then, the system was much more binary. Today, the world is more fragmented. I think of it as a race: the U.S. is ahead, China is closing the gap, and everyone else is running behind. But they’re running. They have agency. They’re not just sitting on the sidelines.

Countries like India, South Africa, Turkey, and Brazil are swing states. They’re not going to line up neatly with Washington or Beijing. BRICS is a perfect example — democracies and autocracies working in the same grouping. The U.S. has to get used to living with that uncertainty. We need to engage, not withdraw.

And at the same time, while the U.S. seems to be retreating from some of its instruments of influence, China appears to be expanding. What worries you about this divergence?

It’s striking. We’re cutting back on USAID, pulling out of multilateral institutions, shutting down things like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe, and cutting back on diplomats. Meanwhile, the Chinese are expanding their presence, their multilateral influence, their media footprint, and their diplomacy.

If the autocrats are organized, the democrats have to be organized too. We can’t just step back and assume things will turn out fine. That’s not how competition works.
 

During the Cold War, despite intense rivalry, the U.S. and USSR cooperated on nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. How do you see cooperation taking shape in today’s U.S.–China rivalry?

That’s a really important point. Cooperation in the Cold War wasn’t just about deterring the Soviets — it was also about working with them when we had overlapping interests. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 was a monumental achievement. It was signed at the height of the Vietnam War, while we were literally fighting proxy conflicts, and yet we found common ground on nuclear weapons.

I think something similar can and should happen now. Even if we’re competing with China, and even with Russia, there are areas where cooperation is in everyone’s interest: nuclear arms control, nonproliferation of dangerous technologies like AI and bioweapons, and climate change. These are existential issues. We cooperated with our adversaries in the past; we should be able to do it again.

One of the big debates in international relations is about the role of ideology. How much does ideology matter in this current geopolitical context?

It matters a lot. My book isn’t called Great Powers — it’s called Autocrats vs. Democrats for a reason. I believe ideas and regime type shape international politics.

Putinism and Xi Jinping Thought are exported differently. Putinism — illiberal nationalism — has ideological allies in Europe and here in the U.S. Xi’s model is more economically attractive to parts of the Global South. Power matters, of course, but it’s not the only thing.

You can see this clearly if you compare Obama and Trump. There was no big structural power shift between 2016 and 2017, but their worldviews were radically different. That’s evidence that ideas and individuals matter a great deal in shaping foreign policy.
 

You’ve warned about the dangers of U.S. retrenchment. Are there historical moments that you see as parallels to today?

I worry about a repeat of the 1930s. When Italy invaded Ethiopia, Americans said, “Where’s Ethiopia?” When Japan invaded China, they said, “Why do we care?” Then came 1939. Stalin and Hitler invaded Poland, and we still said, “That’s not our problem.” Eventually, it became our problem.

If we disengage now, we may find ourselves facing similar consequences. That’s part of why I wrote this book — to push back against the idea that retrenchment is safe. It’s not.

To close, what advice would you give to students who want to build careers like yours? And, could you recommend a book or two for young people entering this field?

Be more intentional than I was. Focus on what you want to do, not just what you want to be. Develop your ideas first, then go into government or academia to act on them. Don’t go into public service just for a title. I saw too many people in government who were there just to “be” something, without a clear agenda. The “to do” should come first; the “to be” comes later.

As for books, my own book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, is coming out soon — you can pre-order it. But the two books that shaped me the most when I was young are Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution and Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter’s Transitions from Authoritarian Rule.

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected through digital infrastructure, the governance of critical technologies has emerged as a central issue in global politics. Once dominated by Western powers, the standard setting of emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things  is tilting toward East Asia, particularly China and South Korea. Their expanding role in defining global technology rules raises questions: How do emerging powers influence international norms through transnational platforms? What role do multinational firms play in the competition to set technical standards? And how does the shift in international digital governance affect the global distribution of technological power?

These are among the core questions guiding the research of Yingqiu Kuang, a 2024–25 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). The fellowship is now accepting applications for the 2026-27 cycle. 

Drawing on a mixed-method approach that combines a novel dataset of 5G standard proposals from more than 400 multinational enterprises with over 100 interviews conducted across China and elsewhere, Kuang’s research reveals how these firms strategically navigate and transform complex global rulemaking environments. By integrating perspectives from comparative political economy, international business, and non-market strategy, her work offers new insights into how emerging economies are reshaping the global technological order.

We spoke with Dr. Kuang about her ongoing research, her experience at APARC, and her reflections on the future of global digital governance. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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Tell us a bit about your research project

I am currently working on my first book manuscript, entitled A Mosaic of Mundane Innovations: Emerging Powers, Multinational Firms, and Global 5G Technology Rules. It investigates a pivotal transformation currently underway in the global order: China and other East Asian states are reshaping the governance of critical technologies, especially in 5G telecommunications. Through transnational standard-setting and rulemaking, they are playing a leading role in the new era of digital transformation.

The project asks two key questions: First, why are nearly half of the global 5G standards coming from multinational enterprises (MNEs) of emerging markets such as China and South Korea? Second, how are their engagements in the global technology competition different from those of traditional technological superpowers during earlier waves of disruptive innovation?

My research reveals the novel strategic repertoire of these emerging economy MNEs. By strategically orchestrating domestic and supranational institutions in technology rulemaking, they have transformed institutional complexity into a global competitive advantage and driven the ascent of China and other East Asian economies in the new global technology complex.  

The project offers two important implications. First, at a time when the world’s attention is focused on state-level geopolitical competition, my research highlights the crucial and often underestimated role of transnational private governance in shaping the outcomes of the global tech race. Second, by revealing a new and more complex pattern of state–business interplay, my research underscores the renewed importance of studying economic dynamism and governance in Asia and beyond in the digital age.

What initially drew you to study your current research topic?

My journey to this topic began not with a theory, but with a simple curiosity about what lies beneath the big numbers. When I was working as a policy researcher at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, I was involved in a multi-year project tracing two-way foreign direct investment (FDI) flows between Canada and Asia. But as I began to look more closely at the aggregated data and analyze their patterns, I found myself constantly wondering: What does each FDI project actually look like on the ground? How do multinational firms interact with local communities and governments? And most importantly, how does innovation really happen in these economies?

These questions drew me toward the firm-level dynamics that large datasets often obscure. As I dug deeper, I realized that in critical technology sectors, emerging economies such as China and South Korea were not just catching up but were beginning to lead, often leapfrogging established Western giants. And surprisingly, this ascent was being driven by the firms themselves, not merely by top-down government directives. This puzzle became the foundation of my book project.

What are some of the largest challenges you have identified in studying rule-making on transnational platforms and global technology governance more broadly?

There are two main challenges that I am still working to address in my research. The first is a fundamental disconnect between the actual practice of global technology governance and the public narrative surrounding it. On one hand, technology rulemaking has long been perceived as a mundane, apolitical process. It typically involves engineers debating minute technical parameters to find optimal solutions to concrete problems. On the other hand, the evolving U.S.-China rivalry has amplified the geopolitical implications of these very rules, capturing the attention of political leaders and the public.

This disconnect creates a fascinating challenge, which I encountered firsthand in my fieldwork: engineers focused on technical minutiae, while executives and policymakers debated grand strategy. Bridging this gap — understanding how technology should best be developed and governed — is a central intellectual task of my work.

The second major challenge is data availability. Because this work was historically seen as purely technical, many international organizations involved in global technology governance have maintained poor archival practices. A crucial next step for the entire field — and a personal passion of mine — is to develop new methods for archiving and analyzing the day-to-day activities of global rulemaking. This would not only expand the scope of my own research but also provide a foundational public good for other scholars seeking to understand this critical intersection of technology, business, society, and global politics.

How has your time at APARC aided your research?

At APARC, I have benefited from what at first seems like a paradox: a lively intellectual community and the rare luxury of a quiet working space. On one hand, the seminars, workshops, and events hosted at APARC and other campus organizations gave me countless opportunities to engage with scholars across disciplines. Their intellectual energy greatly broadened my perspective on Asia and the world. On the other hand, I was also fortunate to enjoy the quiet, friendly, and focused environment of the APARC office, which allowed me to both recharge and concentrate deeply on my research. 

Did you discover anything surprising while you were here?

What surprised me most was the balance between structure and spontaneity at APARC. On one hand, I learned a great deal from the Center’s formal events — seminars, fireside chats, and interdisciplinary workshops that brought together scholars of Asia from across Stanford and beyond. On the other hand, some of the most inspiring moments came in less expected settings: impromptu hallway conversations in Encina Hall, coffee chats in the lounge, lively exchanges over lunch or dinner, and even an afternoon walk with fellows around campus. These informal encounters often stayed with me and shaped my thinking in surprising ways.

What advice would you give to a young scholar in your field?

It’s more of my experience rather than advice, that is, to stay positive and open-minded. Research rarely follows the path you first imagine, but in my experience, the most exciting ideas often emerge when you adapt and embrace unexpected opportunities.

What is on the horizon for you? What's next?

I will continue working on my book manuscript and plan to conduct new fieldwork in Asia and Europe to enrich the qualitative side of the project. At the same time, I am excited to launch my second book-length project, which explores how emerging technologies are pushing states and firms to forge new strategic relationships to facilitate innovation and govern technological change.

Local Governments Drive Most Industrial Policymaking

The data show that roughly 80 percent of industrial policies originate from local governments, including provinces, cities, and counties, while only about 13 percent come from the central government. This pattern highlights the importance of local initiative in shaping China’s industrial landscape.

Over time, however, the researchers find that central influence has grown, with greater policy coordination across different levels of government, especially since the early 2010s.

Policy Tools Evolve as Industries Mature

The study finds that China uses a wide range of tools to carry out its industrial policies, including fiscal subsidies, market access and regulation policies, support technology R&D and adoption, labor policy, and tax incentives, among others. 

The composition of these tools shifts systematically as industries develop.

• Emerging industries tend to receive entry-oriented support such as subsidies and land incentives.
• Mature-industry policies more often target R&D, labor and skills development, supply chain coordination, and consumer-side demand stimulation.

This evolution shows a clear pattern in how governments adjust policy instruments over time.

Imitation is Widespread — and Linked to Weaker Results

Many local governments replicate industrial policies from other regions, particularly from cities within the same province. This imitation contributes to policy duplication, inefficient competition, and industrial overcapacity when multiple localities pursue the same sectors or strategies.

Empirically, the study shows that “follower cities” — those that copy policy language or design from others and upper level governments without nuanced local adaptations — experience smaller gains in firm sales, profits, and productivity compared with cities that create original policies. The findings highlight how widespread imitation can dilute the effectiveness of local policy initiatives.

Different Tools Yield Different Firm Outcomes

By linking policy activity to firm-level data, researchers identify how industrial support affects businesses:

• Industries targeted with supportive policies are more likely to receive subsidies, higher tax deduction rates, and long-term loans.
• Fiscal and land subsidies are associated with higher rates of firm entry and investment.
• R&D support, cluster development, and equity investment show stronger correlations with productivity growth.

These findings highlight the diversity of policy instruments and their varied associations with firm performance.

A Comprehensive View of China’s Policy Landscape

Together, the results provide an unprecedented data-driven map of China’s industrial policymaking from 2000 to 2022.

The dataset—covering millions of documents and thousands of firms—offers a new empirical foundation for understanding how industrial policies are designed, implemented, and adapted over time.
 

Professor Hanming Fang is an applied microeconomist with broad theoretical and empirical interests focusing on public economics. His research integrates rigorous modeling with careful data analysis and has focused on the economic analysis of discrimination; insurance markets, particularly life insurance and health insurance; and health care, including Medicare. 

Hanming Fang is Norman C. Grosman Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. In early 2026, Professor Fang will join the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions as a Skyline Scholar. During his appointment he will participate in a rich spectrum of activities including expert talks and collaborative research efforts.