Jean C. Oi (Chinese name: Chinese: 戴慕珍; pinyin: Dài Mùzhēn[1][2]) is an American political scientist and expert in the politics of China. She is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics in the department of political science at Stanford University. She is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She studies political economy and fiscal reform, particularly in rural China. Oi was president of the Association for Asian Studies between March 2022 and December 2023.[3][4]

Jean Chun Oi
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
SpouseAndrew G. Walder
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Doctoral advisor
Other academic advisors

Education

edit

Oi holds a BA in Political Science and East Asian Languages and Literatures from Indiana University (1971).[5] She then studied political science at the University of Michigan, earning an MA in 1975 and a PhD in 1983.[5][6] Oi's dissertation committee was co-chaired by Allen S. Whiting and Michel Oksenberg, and the other members were Samuel Barnes, Robert Dernberger, Albert Feuerwerker, and Martin King Whyte.[7]

Career

edit

In 1983, Oi joined the political science faculty at Lehigh University, and in 1987 she moved to Harvard University.[5] In 1995 she joined the social science division at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and in 1997 she became a professor of political science at Stanford University.[5] She became the William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics in 2001, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 2006.[5] During the 2005–2006 school year, Oi was the MBA Class of 1962 Visiting Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.[5]

Oi has authored two books about Chinese political economy. Her first book, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government, was published in 1989. State and Peasant in Contemporary China arose from Oi's PhD dissertation at the University of Michigan,[7] combining research interviews and field work to study the interaction between peasant leaders and state officials, and in particular the relationship between power at the level of villages and higher regional powers.[8] Summarizing Oi's findings, Edward Friedman wrote that she "concludes that the form of politics during China's imperial era, republican period, Maoist rule, and the present post-Mao reforms remained traditional, that is, personalistic, based on clientalistic relations," and that "Oi locates the cause of the traditionalistic continuity not in culture but in structural circumstances".[8] Daniel Little called the book "highly insightful".[9]

In 1999, Oi was the sole author of a second book: Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform. The book studies the actions and incentives of government officials in China at the local and regional levels, as drivers of economic success in rural China since the 1970s.[10] The success of rural industry in China under the state socialist system appeared to present a paradox, and Oi used hundreds of interviews conducted over 10 years to demonstrate how the incentives for local officials shifted in ways that promoted rapid growth in rural areas.[11] Oi also co-authored the 2013 book Syncretism: The Politics of Economic Restructuring and System Reform in Japan with Kenji E. Kushida and Kay Shimizu.

In 2019, a citation analysis by political scientists Hannah June Kim and Bernard Grofman identified Oi as one of the top 40 most cited women working as a political scientist at an American university.[6] Oi has received numerous university-wide awards for teaching at Stanford, including being a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.[12] She has been cited in media outlets like The Washington Post,[13] The New York Times,[14] and The Wall Street Journal.[15][16]

Publications

edit

Articles

edit
  • State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (1989)
  • "Fiscal Reform and the Economic Foundations of Local State Corporatism in China", World Politics (1992)
  • "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy", The China Quarterly (1995)
  • Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (1999)
  • Syncretism: The Politics of Economic Restructuring and System Reform in Japan, co-authored (2013)

References

edit
  1. ^ Shan, Shi, ed. (5 July 2019). "Běijīng dàxué zhèngfǔ guǎnlǐ xuéyuàn-sītǎnfú zhōngxīn qiānyuē yíshì jì zhōngměi guānxì zuòtánhuì jǔxíng" 北京大学政府管理学院-斯坦福中心签约仪式暨中美关系座谈会举行 [Peking University School of Government-Stanford Center Signing Ceremony and Symposium on U.S.-China Relations]. Běijīng dàxué xīnwénwǎng 北京大学新闻网 [Peking University News] (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2 January 2022. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  2. ^ Liu, Li. "Zhōngguó shēndù yánjiū gāojí jiǎngtán (liùshí): dài mùzhēn jiàoshòu zhǔjiǎng "pínghéng zhōngguó dìfāng yùsuàn miànlín de tiāozhàn"" 中国深度研究高级讲坛(六十):戴慕珍教授主讲“平衡中国地方预算面临的挑战” [China In-depth Research Senior Lecture (60): Professor Dai Muzhen on “Challenges of Balancing China's Local Budget”]. Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences. Archived from the original on 2 January 2022. Retrieved 2 January 2022.
  3. ^ "Jean Oi Elected Vice President of the Association for Asian Studies". aparc.fsi.stanford.edu. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 17 March 2024.
  4. ^ "Meet the Incoming Vice President: Jean C. Oi". Association for Asian Studies. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 17 March 2024.
  5. ^ a b c d e f "Jean Oi". Stanford University. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  6. ^ a b Kim, Hannah June; Grofman, Bernard (April 2019). "The Political Science 400: With Citation Counts by Cohort, Gender, and Subfield" (PDF). PS: Political Science & Politics. 52 (2): 296–311. doi:10.1017/S1049096518001786. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
  7. ^ a b Oi, Jean C. (1989). State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government. University of California Press. p. xvi.
  8. ^ a b Friedman, Edward (June 1991). "Book Review State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government". American Political Science Review. 85 (2): 605–606. doi:10.2307/1963182. JSTOR 1963182.
  9. ^ Little, Daniel (April 1994). "Book Review State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government". Economic Development and Cultural Change. 42 (3): 663–667. doi:10.1086/452109.
  10. ^ Prime, Penelope B. (1 July 2002). "Review Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform and China's Industrial Technology: Market Reform and Organizational Change". Economic Development & Cultural Change. 50 (4): 1039. doi:10.1086/342514.
  11. ^ Zhou, Xueguang (January 2000). "Review Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform". American Journal of Sociology. 105 (4): 1215–1217. doi:10.1086/210414.
  12. ^ "The Bass University Fellows in Undergraduate Education Program". Stanford University. 2019. Archived from the original on 11 December 2019. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  13. ^ M. Taylor Fravel; J. Stapleton Roy; Michael D. Swaine; Susan A. Thornton; Ezra Vogel (3 July 2019). "China is not an enemy". The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  14. ^ Ian Johnson (26 September 2019). "Barred From Owning Land, Rural Chinese Miss Spoils of Country's Success". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  15. ^ Laurie Burkitt; Brittany Hite (19 March 2014). "Michelle Obama Visit to China Draws Attention to Role of First Ladies". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 4 March 2020.
  16. ^ Brian Spegele; James T. Areddy (8 November 2012). "China Village Hits Democracy Limits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 4 March 2020.