I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. I study comparative politics, political economy, and computational social science, with a focus on China. My research has been published or will soon appear in the Journal of Chinese Political Science and The China Journal.

My dissertation book-style project, “Artificial Intelligence and the Principal-Agent Problem in Autocracy: Digitalizing China’s Government Operations,” challenges the conventional wisdom that the adoption of cutting-edge information technologies always strengthens central control in autocratic systems. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork and large-scale administrative data, I show that in China’s AI procurement and digitalization of governmental operations the central government still is dependent on its local agents. Instead of diminishing principal-agent problems, the adoption of AI has amplified pre-existing information asymmetries and aggravated entrenched agency issues in central-local relations, resulting in greater de facto decentralization. My research advances a narrative that AI has the potential to act as a decentralizing agent: Even within a regime widely depicted as the archetype of “digital authoritarianism,” local actors and periphery agencies can still wield significant influence when conditions permit.

I have received research grants or fellowship awards from the Institute for Humane Studies, the China Times Cultural Foundation, the Stanford Center for Computational Social Science, the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford, the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Stanford School of Humanities & Sciences, and the Stanford King Center on Global Development. For Academic Year 2023-2024, I am a Research Affiliate with the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, and a Dissertation Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences.

Prior to doctoral studies, I earned an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and a B.A. in International Political Economy from Peking University.

This is my current C.V.

You can reach me at jasonluo@stanford.edu.