Zhongyun Zhang

This profile was current as of 2019, when he was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

I am a PhD student in political science. I received my M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I double majored in Political Science and Psychology. My M.A. thesis, “Strong but withheld” examines public support for liberal democratic values and institutions in China. Using national survey data, I find weak domestic support for the very status quo or multi-party democracy in China, but strong expectation for democratic improvements toward a competitive authoritarianism based on the existing single-party system—that is, a one-party system with open and competitive elections. My research interests focus on political economy, state-society relations, political psychology, and other factors that affect or have affected democratic transitions in historical or existing authoritarian regimes in the world, with a regional specialization in China. After the extraordinary development for the past several decades, the structure of Chinese society has greatly changed. These profound changes in Chinese society tend to have far-reaching effects on China’s social cleavages, redistributive policies, political-psychological changes among the public, relevant political reforms, and the regime's prospects for democratization. My study examines how the political, economic, technological, and social changes happened and happening in China function to shape its political economy, state-society relations, and political psychology and their implications for China’s prospects for democratization. Intrigued by the world’s different cultures, I speak fluent Mandarin, English, and Cantonese and a bit of Spanish and Japanese.