APSI Visiting Scholars’ Seminar

In this April 2026 seminar, two visiting scholars, Xi Chen and Ran Xu, will share findings from their research, inviting the audience to engage with questions and feedback:

Xi Chen—“Exit and Voice in Extraordinary Times: Popular Contention in Pandemic China”

Abstract:
In normal times, the Chinese government has been remarkably sophisticated in dealing with societal discontent, allowing citizens to make claims via complaints and petitions, and often tolerating social protests. However, its stringent zero-COVID policy around 2022 created strong incentives for citizens to seek alternative expressions of grievances and dissent. China thus experienced both a significant wave of emigration attempts and novel forms of citizen activism, such as performance art and the White Paper Movement. This talk examines citizens' strategies of exit and voice and their impact on the government's pandemic policy.

Ran Xu—“Running for Survival: Tibetan Antelope Conservation and China’s Environmental Movement in the 1990s”

Abstract:
Across the windswept uplands of the Chang Tang, the Tibetan antelope—chiru—once roamed in vast herds, their migrations echoing an ancient rhythm of life and survival. By the late twentieth century, however, global demand for shahtoosh, the so-called “king of wool,” had driven this creature to the edge of extinction. This paper explores how the Tibetan antelope crisis evolved from a borderland poaching issue into a formative moment in China’s emerging wildlife protection movement. Drawing on archival documents, Chinese media reports, and international NGO investigation materials, it traces the convergence of transnational enforcement efforts, domestic environmental narratives, and the activism of early Chinese ENGOs, particularly Friends of Nature, from the 1990s into the early 2000s. The study argues that the protection story was not simply the heroic narrative celebrated in mainstream official environmental discourse, but a complex process shaped by cross-border barter trade, transnational NGO interventions, and the dynamics of global capitalist fashion markets.

About the speakers:

Xi Chen is a Research Associate Professor at the School of Governance and Policy Science in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research encompasses resilient civil society in China, political economy, political sociology, comparative politics, historical institutionalism, social movements and contentious politics, Chinese politics.

Ran Xu is a PhD candidate at Renmin University. Her research focuses on environmental history, civil society and NGO studies, hydraulic history, economic history, and quantitative history.