Publications

2025

1. MOR

   What the Research on Chinese Bureaucracy Can Do for Organization Theory?

   Xueguang Zhou, and Yuze Sui

   Management and Organization Review,, 2025

   Abs Bib

   Chinese bureaucracy—the organizational apparatus of Chinese governments—has played a significant role in China’s economic development and political control in the post-Mao era. In this article, we draw on research on Chinese bureaucracy in both English and Chinese to highlight major findings in three areas: agency problems and incentive provision, the use of guanxi in policy implementation, and variable coupling among different parts of the bureaucracy. These three aspects are interrelated: agency problems induce the prevalence of informal institutions as an organizational response, which leads to variable coupling in Chinese bureaucracy. We discuss the issues and implications this literature presents for the further development of organization theory and the emerging research agenda.

   @article{zhou2025mor,
     title = {What the Research on Chinese Bureaucracy Can Do for Organization Theory?},
     author = {Zhou, Xueguang and Sui, Yuze},
     journal = {Management and Organization Review,},
     volume = {0},
     number = {0},
     pages = {0},
     year = {2025},
     publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
   }

2023

1. PNAS Nexus

   The Chinese Communist Party and regulatory transparency in China’s food industry

   Qihua Gao, Yasheng Huang, Yuze Sui, and 1 more author

   PNAS nexus, 2023

   Abs Bib

   While it is widely accepted that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) occupies a dominant position in the Chinese political system, few studies have demonstrated CCP’s dominant position based on rigorous statistical analysis. Our paper presents the first such analysis using an innovative measure of regulatory transparency in the food industry across nearly 300 prefectures in China over 10 years. We show that actions by the CCP, while broadly scoped and not targeting the food industry, significantly improved regulatory transparency in the industry. In sharp contrast, food-industry-specific interventions by the State Council, which exercises direct regulatory supervision of the industry, had no impact on regulatory transparency. These results hold in various specifications and robustness checks. Our research contributes to research in China’s political system by empirically and explicitly demonstrating the dominating power of the CCP.

   @article{gao2023pnas,
     title = {The {Chinese} {Communist} {Party} and regulatory transparency in {China}'s food industry},
     author = {Gao, Qihua and Huang, Yasheng and Sui, Yuze and Zheng, Yanchong},
     journal = {PNAS nexus},
     volume = {2},
     number = {3},
     pages = {pgad028},
     year = {2023},
     publisher = {The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
   }

2021

1. Complex Networks

   Modeling and Evaluating Hierarchical Network: An Application to Personnel Flow Network

   Jueyi Liu, Yuze Sui, Ling Zhu, and 1 more author

   Complex Networks & Their Applications,, 2021

   Abs Bib

   This study evaluates (1) the properties of a hierarchical network of personnel flow in a large and multilayered Chinese bureaucracy, in light of selected classical network models, and (2) the robustness of the hierarchical network with regard to the edge weights as strength of “weak ties” that hold different offices together. We compare the observed hierarchical network with the random graph model, the scale-free model, the small-world model, and the hierarchical random graph model. The empirical hierarchical network shows a higher level of local clustering (in both LCC and GCC) and a lower level of fluidity of flow (i.e., high APL) across offices in the network, as compared with the small-world model and the hierarchical random graph model. We also find that the personnel flow network is vulnerable to the removal of “weak ties” that hold together a large number of offices on an occasional rather than regular basis. The personnel flow network tends to dissolve into locally insulated components rather than to maintain an integrated hierarchy.

   @article{liu2021,
     title = {Modeling and Evaluating Hierarchical Network: An Application to Personnel Flow Network},
     author = {Liu, Jueyi and Sui, Yuze and Zhu, Ling and Zhou, Xueguang},
     journal = {Complex Networks & Their Applications,},
     volume = {IX},
     pages = {474-487},
     year = {2021},
     publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
   }

2020

1. HBR

   How Digital Contact Tracing Slowed Covid-19 in East Asia

   Yasheng Huang, Meicen Sun, and Yuze Sui

   Harvard Business Review, 2020

   Bib

   @article{huang2020HBR,
     title = {How Digital Contact Tracing Slowed Covid-19 in East Asia},
     author = {Huang, Yasheng and Sun, Meicen and Sui, Yuze},
     journal = {Harvard Business Review},
     year = {2020},
     publisher = {Harvard Business School Publishing},
   }