Publications
Publications
Doctoral dissertation
2024. The Road to Sustainable Development: A Game Between Central and Local Governments. (Chair: Benjamin Cashore; Committee members: Jie-Sheng Tan-Soo and Xi Lu; Examiners: Adam Liu Yao and Tong Liu)
Peer reviewed publications
2025. Do Science and Technology Studies Suffer from Interdisciplinary Knowledge Mismatches? Lessons from Policy-Oriented Electric Vehicle Scholarship in Southeast Asia. (Under review of Energy Research and Social Sciences; co-authored with Benjamin Cashore)
2024. Top-Down Dominance or Bottom-Up Vigilance: The Role of Information Disclosure in Authoritarian Environmental Governance. (Under review; co-authored with Jie-Sheng Tan-Soo and Shuai Chen)
2023. Last Mile in Anti-Poverty Drive: Impact of Cadres’ Appraisals on Growth and Poverty Reduction. World Development. co-authored with Lu Xi and Lee Chyen Yee)
2021. Failed It or Nailed It: A Historical-Comparative Analysis of Legislating Bushmeat Ban in China. The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law. (Co-authored with Li Hui)
Working papers
2025. Policy as Steps, Not Types: Explaining Divergent Outcomes in Southeast Asia’s Feed-in-Tariff Policies.
2025. Why Existing Policy Efforts Have Failed to Unlock Indonesia’s Vast Solar Potential and How Policy Design Can Make a Difference: A Case Study. (Coauthored with Benjamin Cashore and Abdul Aziz)
2025. Policy Design Approaches for Solar Industrial Development: A Comparative Study of China and India. (Coauthored with Maitreyee Mukherjee)
2025. From Adoption to Durability: Rethinking Policy Diffusion through Agency and Anticipatory Design. (Coauthored with Benjamin Cashore and Lu Xin)
2024. Green Leader Greeting, Blue Sky Fleeting? High-Level Visits and Local Strategic Air Pollution Control. (Singapore Rising Scholar Conference Best Paper Award)
2024. From Laggard to Leader: What Drives Sovereign States to Take Climate Leadership? – An Analytical Framework.
2024. Policy Learning on Climate-Facilitative Technologies in Southeast Asia – A Survey Approach.
2023. Water Decoupling Trends and Drivers in China 2000−2020. (Co-authored with Sonia Akter, David Kaczan, Xiawei Liao, and Marcus Wishart)
Conference presentations
2025. Making Green Finance Work: Anticipatory Policy Design for Lasting Transitions. IESR Regional Dialogue on Energy Transition, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2025. Unlocking Indonesia’s Solar Future: The Role of Anticipatory Policy Design in Overcoming Political Gridlock. IES Regional Capacity Building Workshop, NUS, Singapore
2025. How Self-Undermining Policy Feedback Hinders the Energy Transition: A Case of Indonesia’s Solar Development Stalemate. 7th International Conference on Public Policy, Chiang Mai, Thailand
2025. Policy as Bit, Not Kit Explaining Divergent Outcomes in Southeast Asia's Feed-in-Tariff Policies. 7th International Conference on Public Policy, Chiang Mai, Thailand
2024. Green Leader Greeting, Blue Sky Fleeting? High-Level Visits and Local Strategic Air Pollution Control (Best Paper Award). 2024 2th Singapore Rising Scholar Conference, Singapore
2024. Drivers and Policy Design Approaches for Solar Industrial Development: A Comparative Study of China and India. 2024 9th Asia Pacific Public Policy Network Annual Conference, Guangzhou, China
2023. Naming, Faming, and Shaming: Does Information Disclosure of Pollution Ranking impact local environmental performance, and how? 2023 Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance (online)
2023. Leader visits and China’s Air Pollution Control. 18th East Asian Economic Association International Conference, Seoul, South Korea
2023. Government-Initiated Information Disclosure on air pollution ranking and public involvement. 6th International Conference on Public Policy at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
2022. Window dressing and political loyalty: Does political leaders’ inspection tour alleviate local air pollution? Advanced Graduate Workshop at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India.
2022. Beyond Economic Development: China’s local compliance under new development goals. IPPA Summer School and Workshop on Public Policy, Venezia-Padova, Italy.
2022. From laggard to leader: What drives sovereign states to take climate leadership? International Studies Association Annual Convention (online).
2021. Failed it or nailed it: A historical-comparative analysis of legislating bushmeat ban in China. 5th International Conference on Public Policy (online) and the Lien International Conference on Good Governance 2021, Singapore.
2020. Poverty reduction and economic growth in China: Two ends of a seesaw. The East Asia Institute Seminar at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.
2020. Does the antipoverty-oriented performance appraisal slow down GDP growth?: A quasi-experiment for Chinese counties. Workshop at Renmin Univeristy, China.
2018. Perceiving and debating the socio-economic costs of reducing air pollution in China. Workshop at University of Sussex, UK.
2017. The influence of Confucian traditional culture on democratic value – A Taiwan case. SIRPA Seminar at Fudan University, China.
Reports, op-ed and others
2025. Advancing sustainable trade through anticipatory policy design: Lessons for, and from, Southeast Asia. Hinrich Foundation. (Coauthored with Benjamin Cashore and Chunhua Ye)
2025. Sino-India Relations in Light of Green Energy Transition. China-India Brief. Centre on Asia and Globalisation. (Coauthored with Maitreyee Mukherjee)
2023. “Sponge city” Failures Show Holes in Current Climate Change Defence. Strait Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/sponge-city-failures-show-holes-in-current-climate-change-defence (coauthored with Vinod Thomas)
2021. Green China: Towards cleaner and more sustainable growth. Development Research Center of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (DRC) and the World Bank. (Collaborated with Sonia Akter et al.)
2019. The US Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement: Short-term Setback or Long-term Trouble? Internal reports to China's National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC). (Co-authored with Liu Donghui et al.)
2018. Early Warning System for Air Pollution in Chinese Cities: A View. All India Disaster Mitigation Institute. Issue No. 172.
2016. Fudan Survey of China’s Neighbouring Countries. (In Chinese, co-edited with Shi Yuan Hua et al.)
2016. Structure, Culture, and Institution: Factors Influencing Cross-Strait Democratic. Collaborative Innovation Center for peaceful development of cross-strait relations (CICCSR) Proceedings. (In Chinese)