Field Research and Governance in Xi’s China: Reflections from Middlebury’s Jessica Teets

On this episode of China Field Notes, Scott Kennedy talks with Jessica Teets of Middlebury College about the challenges and benefits of doing fieldwork in China, and what she and her research partners have learned about the complexities of civil society in an authoritarian context and the unintended consequences of governance reforms under Xi Jinping.

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Jessica C. Teets is a Professor in the Political Science Department at Middlebury College, Guang Biao Distinguished Chair Professor at Zhejiang University, and Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chinese Political Science. Her research focuses on governance in authoritarian regimes, especially the role of civic participation. She is the author of Civil Society Under Authoritarianism: The China Model (Cambridge University Press, 2014), editor (with William Hurst) of Local Governance Innovation in China: Experimentation, Diffusion, and Defiance (Routledge Contemporary China Series, 2014), and editor (with Max Grömping) of Lobbying the Autocrat: the Dynamics of Policy Advocacy in Nondemocracies (University of Michigan Press, 2023), in addition to articles published in The China Quarterly, World Politics, Governance, and the Journal of Contemporary China among others. Teets currently has a new book manuscript (with Dr. Xiang Gao) under review on changing governance under Xi Jinping, tentatively titled, Beyond Fragmented Authoritarianism.