Chuyu Liu is an assistant professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Pennsylvania State University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on ethnic conflict, the political economy of development, and East Asian security. His work has appeared in Energy Policy, Environmental Politics, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Comparative Economics, the Journal of East Asian Studies, Security Studies, and The China Review.

Research expertise

• Ethnic conflict
• Nationalism
• Development
• Political Economy

Media appearances

• The Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/02/22/chinas-minorities-have-a-tough-time-finding-jobs?fbclid=IwAR1WIht7LWb33FziHaAU553Q4s6lSRoM_AsfOmzQCWbnYg6JuoROzqATLac
• Wilson Center: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/greening-bri-governance-southeast-asia-latin-america-and-beyond 
• Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-the-united-states-should-compete-with-china-on-global-clean-energy-finance/

Other links

• Amsterdam Conflict Research Network

Research methods

• Statistical methods
• Archival research
• Elite interviews

Current research projects

• The religious repression during the Maoist Era
  This project examines the scale, strategies, and imapcts of religious repression in Mao’s China (collaborator: Howard Liu). 

• The politics of ethnic classification in China
  This project inveisgates the political origins of ethnic classification in Maoist China and the long-term legacy of state-led ethnic formation in contemporary China (collaborator: Yinghui Zhou). 

• Bureaucratic control in ethnicially divided societies
  This project explores the politics of appointment in regard to local bureaucratic insitutions during Maoist China (collaborator: Steve Bai).

Research grants

• Starter Grant, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), 2023 - 2029

Current cooperation

• Howard Liu (University of South Carolina)
• Steve Bai (Yale University)
• Yinghui Zhou (Columbia University)

In the UvA, I teach a variety of BA and MA courses. For BA students, I teach 
Democracies, Autocracies, and Transitions, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, and 
Government and Politics in Contemporary China. For MA programs, I teach both Civil Wars and State-building and Politics of Authoritarianism (Research Project). 

PhD supervision

• Yue Li, UvA PhD: The reconstruction of internal migrants’ social networks and public sphere in post-resettlement neighborhoods in Shanghai
• Noyonika Das, UvA PhD: Local Control and Electoral Violence in West Bengal, India