Anna Zhang

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2019 - 2020 Academic Year

Redistribution and Territorial Control: Evidence from China

Fixed asset investment has been the largest form of redistribution in China since the 1978 economic reform. What explains the state’s shift from targeting eastern coastal regions for investment to western peripheral provinces in the 1990s? Using an original county-level dataset and survey experiment, Zhang’s project shows that China’s redistributive policy shift has been driven by the goal of strengthening state control over frontier territories in the face of rising Islamism.

Anna Zhang, Department of Political Science

Anna Zhang is a PhD candidate in political science. Her research focuses on state-building strategies in China’s peripheral regions. She draws on data from archival resources and interviews from fieldwork in three border provinces of China.

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