Yiqing Xu

Yiqing Xu is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Stanford University. He is also a faculty affiliate at the 21st Century China Center. He works in political methodology and comparative politics with a focus on China.

Xu received a BA in economics from Fudan University, an MA in economics from the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University, and a PhD in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught at the University of California, San Diego from 2016 to 2019 and was a principal member of the Harvard China Health Policy Group, which gave direct policy advice on health system reform to the State Council of China. He also worked as a consultant for the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank.

His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and Political Analysis, among other peer reviewed journals. He has been awarded the John T. Williams Dissertation Prize by the Society for Political Methodology, the Best Article Award from the American Journal of Political Science, the Editors' Choice Award from Political Analysis, and the Miller Prize for the best work appearing in Political Analysis. In addition to his research on political methodology and Chinese political economy, he writes book reviews for established journals and column articles for major Chinese media, including Caijing, LifeWeek, WSJ (China), and The Paper.

King Center Supported Research

2021 - 2022 Academic Year | Global Development Research Funding

Gaslighting: How The Chinese Government Shapes Public Opinion through Manipulating Comment Sections on Social Media

Using both observational and experimental data, this project attempts to understand how the Chinese government manipulates public opinion by controlling the comment sections on Sina Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. Observationally, Xu will collect high-frequency social media post and comment data to study how comment censorship is exercised and its impact on content and engagement. Experimentally, Xu will use online survey experiments to investigate the effect of comment censorship on respondents' beliefs and opinions about real-world events.