Political Science Speaker Series

How does the world’s most powerful authoritarian state govern vast and diverse diaspora communities?

Join Dr. Diana Fu, Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Toronto, as she examines authoritarian citizenship in contemporary China.

Abstract: Deftly managing internal and external threats has always been central to maintaining the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China. Yet in no other era has governing overseas populations been as crucial to China as under Xi Jinping (2012-2022). Xi’s administration is characterized by “overreach” in multiple spheres (Shirk 2022). One particular area of overreach in the Xi era is the use of coercive power in the form of transnational repression—the harassment, surveillance, and extradition or abduction of diaspora members who the party-state views as threats.

How does global China as a power project manifest itself in governing the diaspora abroad? How and why has China’s use of coercive power abroad—in particular, transnational repression—increased under Xi? How has the party-state wielded coercive power alongside a wider toolkit of control against diaspora populations outside of its borders? And what makes China’s playbook of control distinctive compared to other authoritarian and illiberal states? This talk will present a comparative analysis of what, if anything, distinguishes the Chinese party-state’s governance of its global diaspora.

Please Note; No registration is required.