I study international relations with a regional focus on China. I study how a rising power like China wields economic statecraft in shaping global orders and international norms, focusing on both the development of established liberal norms, and the adoption of new norms featuring renewable energy transition and technology competition.

China shapes global norms and influences both elite and public opinion. My research examines how these efforts are amplified in an era marked by three key challenges: de-globalization, de-democratization, and the retreat of U.S. global leadership. I explore multiple issue areas—including human rights, energy transition, and information technology—with a focus on how challenges are reframed to align with shifting domestic interests, how rising powers and emerging influential actors negotiate and contest new rules, and how these evolving norms take shape and materialize on the global stage.

I demonstrate that China’s influence is far from coercive but operates through constructing shared identities in narratives, and responding to demands and initiatives emanating from the recipient countries. I further demonstrate that China’s influence in shaping international norms faces notable constraints and limitations, largely depending on how receptive middle powers are to specific issues. In some areas, receptivity is contingent on alignment with pre-existing normative values, whereas in others—particularly those seen as relatively value-neutral—China’s influence encounters fewer barriers.

I also work on China’s inward- and outward-looking media strategies for image building. I write on how state-run media engage with foreign news on social media, its new communication strategy as the so-called “soft propaganda,” as well as how they publicize their overseas development projects as public diplomacy.

I primarily use text-as-data in most of my work, having experiences in working with both unstructured social media data and structured scripts, policy documents and news articles. Methods-wise, I use machine learning methods to uncover patterns from the corpus.

Finally, my work has policy implications, providing insights into how China situates itself within the international order and assesses the extent of support China enjoys from its Global South peers. It offers guidance to policymakers in the U.S. on how to navigate the challenges posed by changing norms and shifting orders.

My research has received generous support by the Center on Contemporary China as a post-doctoral research fellow at Princeton University, School of International and Public Affairs as a post-doctoral research fellow at Columbia University, the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations as a non-residential project fellow in the Human Rights, Law and Democracy section at the University of Pennsylvania, Cline Center for Advanced Social Research as a Schroeder Summer Graduate Fellow and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois, and APSA Political Communication Section. My articles have or will be published on International Affairs, Journal of International Development, PS: Political Science & Politics and Encyclopedia of Political Communication.