Dan Chen

Dan Chen is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond. She is also affiliated with the University of Virginia East Asia Center and serves as a board member of the Association of Chinese Political Studies. In 2024, she was selected to join the Next Generation Leaders program with the Committee of 100. From 2021 to 2023, she was a Public Intellectuals Program (PIP) Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. From July to September 2018, she was a visiting fellow at the University of Sydney China Studies Centre.

Her research approaches the durability of authoritarian rule from a grassroots perspective. Focusing on China, her research is motivated by the dynamics between local forces and central power, as observed in popular culture, public opinion, news media, and local governance. Her work has been published in Asian Studies Review, Public Performance & Management Review, Critical Discourse Studies, Journal of Experimental Political Science, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Political Research Quarterly, The China Quarterly, Modern China, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, and others.

Her first book, Convenient Criticism: Local Media and Governance in Urban China, was published by SUNY Press in 2020. It answers the question of why and how critical reporting persists at the local level in China despite state media control, a hallmark of authoritarian rule. Synthesizing ethnographic observation, interviews, survey and content analysis data, Convenient Criticism reveals evolving dynamics in local governance and the state-media relationship. Local critical reporting, though limited in scope, occurs because local leaders, motivated by political career advancement, use media criticism strategically to increase bureaucratic control, address citizen grievances, and improve governance. This new approach to governance enables the shaping of public opinion while, at the same time, disciplining subordinate bureaucrats. In this way, the party-state not only monopolizes propaganda but also expropriates criticism, which expands the notion of media control from the suppression of journalism to its manipulation. One positive consequence of these practices has been to invigorate television journalists' unique brand of advocacy journalism.