The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is pleased to announce the competition for the 2026-27 An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chinese Studies.
For academic year 2026-27 the Fairbank Center will offer up to two post-doctoral fellowships to support participants in an interdisciplinary research group to study The Social Foundations of State Power in China. Through this research theme, the group will examine how social structure, inequality, and ideology sustain state capacity and regime durability in contemporary China.
The 2026-27 An Wang research group will be led by Professor Yuhua Wang, Department of Government, and Professor Xiang Zhou, Department of Sociology. Xiang Zhou brings expertise on social stratification, causal inference, and survey data integration. His work on China’s inequality and mobility—spanning analyses of Gini trends, returns to education, and the structure of opportunity—provides the empirical foundation. Yuhua Wang contributes complementary strengths in political institutions, state formation, and authoritarian governance. His research on the long-run trade-offs between state strength and ruler survival, the infrastructural reach of the modern state, and ideological control in academia frames the project’s political and historical dimensions.
Building on recent empirical studies, the group will seek to understand how China’s evolving social stratification, informal institutions, and value changes underpin both the endurance and adaptation of its authoritarian state. With China’s ongoing social transformation—mass education expansion, rural–urban integration, digital governance, and renewed ideological campaigns—this is an opportune moment to build cross-disciplinary frameworks linking social stratification to state durability. Continue reading 2026-27 An Wang postdoc
