Supervisor: Annemieke van den Dool, Assistant professor of Environmental Policy
Student Researchers: Chenyu Liu (Class of 2025)
About the Project:
Why do policymakers in China pay attention to certain problems but not to others? This project aims to understand how policymakers in China decide which issues to address by focusing on two potential driving forces: crisis situations and statistical data.
By looking closely at events like earthquakes and floods, we explore how these crises capture policymakers’ attention and lead to action. We will do so by reviewing both Chinese and English journal articles to test existing ideas about how policymaking in China is influenced by large-scale emergencies, such as natural disasters, environmental accidents, or epidemic outbreaks.
Additionally, the project will look at how policymakers in China use and respond to statistical data to highlight problems and support their policy choices. In studies of policymaking, statistics are often seen as a key factor that drives changes in policy. However, it is still unclear how this plays out in China specifically.
