Publications

Chen, D., & Zhan, J. V. (2025). Does Digital Surveillance Boost Citizen Compliance? Evidence from China

Political Psychology (Revise and Resubmit), 2025

Authoritarian regimes increasingly deploy digital surveillance to monitor citizens, but how this affects citizen compliance remains understudied. We argue that, beyond repressing or deterring regime opponents, digital surveillance serves as an instrument of everyday governance that operates through psychological mechanisms rather than direct coercion. Specifically, pervasive monitoring fosters routine compliance with the regime through self-regulation and mutual observation. However, these effects attenuate over time as citizens habituate to surveillance and update risk assessments about noncompliance. We test this argument against empirical evidence from China. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork and employing a quasi-natural experiment enabled by two pilot surveillance projects that coincided with two national social surveys, we reveal digital surveillance’s paradoxical short- and long-term effects: Newly introduced surveillance significantly boosts citizen compliance. Over time, however, this effect diminishes, and even reinforced surveillance cannot sustain the initial surge in compliance. The findings highlight both the potency and the limits of digital surveillance as a tool of authoritarian governance.

Chen, D., & Zhan, J. V. (2025). The Social Foundation of Digital Control: A Comparative Analysis of Grassroots Surveillance in China.

The China Quarterly (under review), 2025

China’s use of digital technologies for mass surveillance has intensified scholarly debate on digital authoritarianism. However, focusing on state-level capacity overlooks crucial variations in grassroots implementation. This study addresses this gap by examining grassroots authorities’ surveillance strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period of unprecedented state control and intensive deployment of digital tools such as health and travel codes. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork and comparative case studies of four urban and rural communities, we find that grassroots control necessitates integrating digital technologies with human-based surveillance. The success of this hybrid approach is not determined by technology but by the strength of community social networks. Whereas communities with robust networks achieved effective control despite digital limitations, communities with tenuous networks struggled despite advanced digital infrastructure. Challenging assumptions about linear technological progression, our findings suggest that social infrastructure and human agents remain indispensable for grassroots surveillance, highlighting the social foundation of authoritarian control in the digital age.

Chen, D., & Zhan, J. V. (2025). When Does Surveillance Trigger Resistance? Public Response to Escalating Digital Control in China.

Journal of Chinese Political Science, 2025

Digital technologies have revolutionized authoritarian states’ capacity for social control through mass surveillance. However, how citizens perceive and react to escalating digital control remains understudied. This research proposes a risk-benefit analytical framework to explain how awareness of state control intentions shapes public reactions to digital surveillance in conjunction with surveillance intrusiveness. Using two independent survey experiments with over 2,000 respondents, we examine the public acceptance of four digital control measures with increasing intrusiveness: CCTV cameras in public areas, CCTV cameras in residential communities, smartphone location tracking, and smartphone usage monitoring. We find that awareness of the state’s mass monitoring and targeted repression intentions significantly decreases public support, especially for more intrusive measures. Our findings suggest that while digital surveillance innovations expand authoritarian states’ control capabilities, technological overreach may backfire by evoking public resistance.

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Wang, Z., & Chen, D. (2025). The Price of Sacrifice: Revolutionary Capital and Localized Fiscal Bargaining in China

Working Paper, 2025

How does revolutionary sacrifice translate into material compensation? In China’s fiscal system, central resource allocation involves not only economic criteria but also political considerations such as rewarding historical loyalty and bolstering legitimacy. We argue that the legacy of revolutionary martyrs constitutes a form of “revolutionary capital” that enhances localities’ bargaining leverage with the central state, enabling them to secure greater fiscal transfers. To test this, we use large language models with structured schema-based classification to compile a novel dataset of over 2 million revolutionary martyrs, aggregated to 2,800 county-level units, linked to contemporary fiscal transfer data across three decades (1994, 2000, 2018). We find that localities with more martyrs consistently receive substantially higher fiscal transfers from upper-level governments. Furthermore, the returns to sacrifice are stratified: localities with high-ranking martyrs secure even greater fiscal premiums, suggesting that elite networks, rather than mere mass sacrifice, serve as the primary mechanism for mobilizing revolutionary capital. Beyond hierarchical stratification, we uncover significant temporal heterogeneity, with sacrifices during the Party’s formative stages yielding the highest returns. Crucially, we disentangle the transmission mechanisms through two contrasting channels. The first is a “dying channel” of institutionalized memory, where martyr memorial parks serve as physical anchors of legitimacy to secure transfers. The second is a “living channel” of elite networks, demonstrating that fiscal premiums are most pronounced where revolutionary cohorts survived into the post-1949 regime. This comparison reveals a stark political reality: while the dead provide the historical legitimacy, the living disproportionately amplify its conversion into bureaucratic power. To address endogeneity, we exploit an interaction-based instrumental variable strategy. We leverage exogenous variation in revolutionary mobilization driven by historical drought shocks (which lowered the opportunity cost of rebellion) and terrain ruggedness (which provided strategic sanctuary), conditional on the distance to revolutionary base areas. These findings contribute to the political economy of authoritarianism by demonstrating how revolutionary legacies of state formation become embedded in distributive politics, revealing an enduring “price” the state pays to compensate for historical loyalty.