Anti-corruption reforms are expected to improve public services by reducing waste and private extraction, yet services do not always improve even when corruption is effectively constrained. This chapter argues that service outcomes depend on how corruption was organized before reform. When corrupt exchange becomes repeated and embedded in organizational roles, it can generate discretionary resources and trusted relationships that help public organizations operate despite weaknesses in their formal support systems. Such corruption remains costly and distorting, but removing it may also disrupt the informal capacity that sustained routine work.

I examine this argument in China's health sector, where the National Volume-Based Procurement program and the 2023 anti-corruption campaign constrained drug-related corruption. Province-level expenditure data from 2010 to 2023 show that outpatient care did not become more affordable and that expenditure rose more where hospitals had relied more heavily on the drug-centered system weakened by reform. Firm records and field interviews provide complementary evidence that the reforms disrupted both financial and relational support. The findings identify a central challenge for anti-corruption reform: after constraining private extraction, how can governments replace the informal resources and relationships on which public provision has come to depend?

How can firms sustain a transition toward innovation when reform weakens the old model before institutions supporting the new one are fully usable? China's pharmaceutical innovation boom presents this puzzle. Regulatory reforms made novel-drug development increasingly feasible, but domestic institutions for financing and commercializing innovation remained incomplete. Meanwhile, National Volume-Based Procurement (NVBP) placed firms under severe financial pressure by weakening the established generic model. Yet drug-development activity accelerated.

I argue that firms can bridge such a reform-induced support gap by activating latent institutional alternatives: institutions outside the reforming system that already supply needed support but were previously peripheral. For Chinese pharmaceutical firms, the global market for cross-border licensing offered a way to monetize promising drug candidates before they generated reliable domestic returns. By licensing overseas rights while retaining their domestic pipelines, firms could use international transactions to sustain development at home.

I evaluate the argument using firm-level pharmaceutical sales, quarterly drug-registration records, and licensing transactions. After 2019, firms with the average exposure among those affected by NVBP recorded an estimated 9.8 additional weighted registrations per 100 firms per year relative to unexposed firms, equivalent to 26.4% of the pre-NVBP mean. Among firms with similar prior development histories and reform exposure, those completing their first license-out subsequently recorded an estimated 10.2 additional domestic Phase I–III registrations over twelve quarters relative to matched firms, with no comparable increase in bioequivalence registrations. A case study of Jiangsu Hengrui Pharma traces this process within a major incumbent whose transition toward innovation had initially depended on profits from its older business model.

The findings distinguish the pressure that prompts organizational change from the support that sustains it. Reform may weaken an established model before its replacement can support firms making the transition. During this interval, an institution outside the reforming system can provide a temporary bridge, although only firms with the capabilities needed to access it can benefit.

How do governments promote complex foreign policies to inattentive domestic audiences? Existing scholarship often treats nationalism as a necessary cognitive shortcut, translating abstract and distant foreign affairs into emotionally resonant narratives. Yet nationalist appeals risk domestic entrapment and may constrain long-term international cooperation. This paper challenges the presumed dominance of nationalist propaganda by identifying an alternative: localized communication of foreign policy. Focusing on China's domestic promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), I argue that state media adapt to the digital media landscape by translating broad foreign policy initiatives into content relevant to regional audiences.

Using computational text analysis of a decade of Sina Weibo posts from 36 national and provincial Party newspapers, alongside a comprehensive survey of more than 3,400 WeChat Official Accounts, I document a consistent pattern of localized reporting. Provincial newspapers emphasize regional economic opportunities and cultural experiences associated with the BRI rather than nationalist mythmaking. I further show how this localized strategy mobilizes diverse nonofficial actors to promote the BRI to more specialized audiences through original content. The findings advance research on foreign policy communication by showing how states use localized digital media to cultivate domestic support beyond nationalist appeals.

Given the central role of People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the global climate crisis, discussion and analysis of Chinese actions and pledges on decarbonization abound. However, less examined are the popular "demand" side of climate change politics inside of China. Our article explores a new set of data to gauge public discourse in China related to climate change by looking at trending topics on the prominent social media platform, Sina Weibo. In over 348,000 trending topics on Weibo from June 2017 to February 2021, we find only 336 unique topics, that is 0.12%, related to climate change. Even in the rare occasions when climate-related topics start trending, we find a general lack of substantive engagement in Weibo posts.

As services have come to account for an ever growing portion of employment in China, platform-based delivery work has grown exponentially, incorporating millions of workers. Based on a study of food-delivery company Ele.me, we first provide a detailed account of the structure of the platform-based food delivery industry, as well as worker grievances and resistance. While Ele.me workers are subjected to algorithmic control and intensive evaluation, the subcontracting structure of employment presents workers with new forms of leverage. Workers engage in quiet, small-scale, and WeChat-mediated strikes that target the subcontractors who are their direct employers, a phenomenon distinct from the occasional acts of collective resistance among food couriers in other countries. While these strikes have limitations in advancing worker interests, we show how labor unrest has emerged among such workers despite an increasingly constrained political environment and a high degree of online censorship.

The Brexit referendum and Donald Trump's electoral victory in 2016 renewed debates over the intrinsic value of democracy and equal voting rights. In Against Democracy, Jason Brennan argues that political ignorance and misinformation undermine “one person, one vote” and justify epistocracy, or rule by the knowledgeable. This essay defends democracy by drawing on Mary Parker Follett's model of robust participation, with its emphasis on creative citizenship and integration. I argue that Follett's account offers a response to Brennan's critique: democratic participation can cultivate civic competence while avoiding the illegitimate domination associated with restricting political authority to those deemed more knowledgeable.

This essay evaluates a domestic challenge to the feasibility of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): limited central coordination and oversight. Drawing on principal-agent theory and the two-level game model, I argue that the proliferation of subnational diplomacy under the BRI exacerbates information asymmetries between central and local governments, weakening the center's capacity to oversee local initiatives. The analysis highlights the need to reconfigure local government incentives so that implementation remains aligned with central objectives.