Summer Research Opportunities

PI: Victor Shih

Opening(s): 1-2  (20 hours per week appointment)

Description:
The assistants will help to compile biographical data on Chinese elites and compile data on Chinese emergency management. Applicants will be required to be fluent in Mandarin Chinese language and to be detail-oriented with qualitative analysis skills.

2. Project Name: Chinese Newspaper Project

PI: Molly Roberts

Opening(s): 2  (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
This project will involve updating, maintaining and analyzing an ongoing project utilizing large scale Chinese newspaper data to help further understand the Chinese media environment and its political constraints. RAs will be required to have proficiency in R, automated text analysis, and Chinese language. Deliverables include updating the database to the end of 2023, gathering more papers, and preliminary analysis. 

3. Project Name: U.S.-China Scientific Collaboration

PI(s): Molly Roberts and Ruixue Jia

Opening(s): 2  (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
This project will involve obtaining data from publication databases to better understand the U.S.-China scientific relationship, how it has evolved, and is currently evolving in reaction to U.S. and China science policy. RAs will engage in data collection, cleaning, and analysis. RAs are required to have proficiency in R, and optionally Python. 

4. Project Name: Headlines in China

PI(s): Harry Doshay and Lei Guang

Opening(s): 1-2  (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Track top 5 original Chinese media reports that are significant indicators of major changes in policy, politics, or economy; write a critical analysis every two weeks for "pulse on China" column; possibly to be included in China 360, center publication. Should have Chinese fluency and good English language writing credentials. Should complete 2-3 posts by the end of summer.

5. Project Name: Chinese in San Diego

PI(s): Harry Doshay and Lei Guang

Opening(s): 1-2  (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Map San Diego Chinese American communities by country of origin, generation, occupation, etc. to understand the diversity and common experiences of recent Chinese immigrants to the region. Conduct interviews, understand changes in their identity, and group interactions. Interviews could commence over the summer with summer research assistants. Interview experience and connections to the local Chinese American community preferred. Should complete 10 interviews by the end of summer.

6. Project Name: When Legislators Tweet

PI(s): Yang Yang and Yan Liu

Opening: 2 (10 hours per week)

Description:
Expanding on previous work which catalogued and analyzed U.S. congressional tweets on China, this project plans to expand the scope of the project to commonwealth countries’ legislative representatives’ tweets. Deliverables include a database of tweets from other countries and preliminary analysis of text via a topic model. Should have R, Python, machine learning, LLM skills/experience. Assistants will gather data and do preliminary analysis.

1. Project Name: China’s Elite Politics

PI: Victor Shih

Openings: 1-2 (20 hours per week appointment)

Description:
One assistant will help download missing articles on how China analyzes the U.S. and update database on Xi’s activities. Another assistant will help code the elite biographical data using more automated approaches. They will help scrape a data set of local official activities. Deliverables include completed database of articles, up-to-date database on Xi’s activities, automated process for coding biographical data, and uncleaned dataset of local official activities.

2. Project Name: Chinese Newspaper Project

PI: Molly Roberts

Openings: 2 (20 hours per week appointment) 

Description: 
This project will involve updating, maintaining and analyzing an ongoing project utilizing large scale Chinese newspaper data to help further understand the Chinese media environment and its political constraints. RAs will be required to have proficiency in R, automated text analysis, and Chinese language. Deliverables include updating the database to the end of 2022 and preliminary analysis.  

3. Project Name: Chinese Courts

PI: Kwai Ng

Opening: 1 (15 hours per week appointment)

Description:
The project extends my research agenda on the growing significance of the Chinese courts. A most noticeable development as a result of the reforms is the establishment of a new tier of circuit courts. Since 2014, there have been ten circuit courts set up, covering the entire country. It was estimated that the courts handled a combined total of about 20,000 cases per year. To empirically test the two competing hypotheses whether these courts are part of a process of legal professionalization or increased administrative oversight, I plan to look at the cases decided by the circuit courts. I plan to scrap the judgments of the circuit courts in the past three years (2019-2021) from the official website and look at the output of the courts’ decisions. I will also select a subsample of two hundred cases for in-depth reading. RA should have text scraping experience, experience with Chinese court documents, and Chinese language fluency. Deliverables include a completed database of 200 articles and notes sorting the articles into qualitative categories. The 1 RA will assist in both scraping and initial analysis.

4. Project Name: Data and Code Exploration

PI: Ruixue Jia

Opening: 1 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
I am looking for assistance to explore data and codes this summer. This effort comprises a few parts, including (1) organizing existing data in my research to share via China Data Lab and (2) exploring ChatGPT for coding text data. RA should have database management skills, R proficiency, Chinese language proficiency. Deliverables include cleaned databases for CDL, and plan for publicizing of research materials (via blog post or other means).

5. Project Name: U.S.-China Scientific Collaboration

PI: Molly Roberts

Openings: 2 (15 hours per week appointment)

Description:
This project will involve obtaining data from publication databases to better understand the U.S.-China scientific relationship, how it has evolved, and is currently evolving in reaction to U.S. and China science policy.  RAs will engage in data collection, cleaning, and analysis.  RAs are required to have proficiency in R, and optionally Python.

6. Project Name: Chinese Students in the U.S.

PIs: Harry Doshay and Lei Guang

Opening: 1 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Research on how studying abroad affects Chinese students' values and beliefs, including political ideology and how exposure to foreign education changes their views of China and host country. This work can continue by preparing for a rollout of an initial survey in late 2023. Should have interest in topic and connections to local student groups on campus to better understand the environment where the survey will be fielded.  

7. Project Name: Headlines in China

PIs: Harry Doshay and Lei Guang

Openings: 1-2 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Track top 5 original Chinese media reports that are significant indicators of major changes in policy, politics, or economy; write a critical analysis every two weeks for "pulse on China" column; possibly to be included in China 360, center publication. Should have Chinese fluency and good English language writing credentials. Should complete 2-3 posts by end of summer.

8. Project Name: China expert Interviews

PIs: Harry Doshay and Lei Guang

Openings: 1-2 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Part of a team to prepare questions for and conduct interviews with China scholars, including 21CCC faculty and non-resident scholars, about their take on contemporary developments in China or U.S. China relations. Write up the interviews for publication on website. Should have solid writing credentials. Deliverables include 2-4 interviews and writeups completed by end of summer.

9. Project Name: Chinese in San Diego

PIs: Harry Doshay and Lei Guang

Openings: 1-2 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Map San Diego Chinese American communities by country of origin, generation, occupation, etc. to understand the diversity and common experiences of recent Chinese immigrants to the region. Conduct interviews, understand changes in their identity, and group interactions. Interviews could commence over the summer with summer research assistants. Interview experience and connections to local Chinese American community preferred. Should complete 10 interviews by end of summer.

10. Project Name: When Legislators Tweet

PIs: Yang Yang and Yan Liu

Openings: 2 (15 hours per week)

Description:
Expanding on previous work which catalogued and analyzed U.S. congressional tweets on China, this project plans to expand the scope of the project to commonwealth countries’ legislative representatives’ tweets. Deliverables include database of tweets from other countries and preliminary analysis of text via a topic model. Should have R, Python, machine learning, LLM skills/experience. Assistants will gather data and do preliminary analysis.

11. Project Name: Chinese Public Diplomacy

PIs: Adam Wu and Lei Guang

Opening: 1 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
This project is part of a larger endeavor to understand the logic of political communication between Chinese political leaders and their diplomatic force as well as its implications for foreign policy implementation in authoritarian states. I am seeking two research assistants to help with hand-coding samples of training data for the development of pattern classifiers for Chinese diplomats' public remarks. Applicants must be proficient in both English and Chinese. Familiarity with Chinese politics and Party-speak is not required, but highly desirable.  

12. Project Name: Patents and Innovation in China and the U.S.

PIs: Ruixue Jia, Lei Guang and Young Yang

Opening: 1 (10 hours per week appointment)

Description:
Assist with data collection, cleaning, and analysis related to a project assessing Chinese innovation via patent filing and the cross-filing of patents by Chinese and Americans in each other’s patent authorities, namely, USPTO and Chinese CNIPA. Candidates possessing experience with R and data management will be given priority.