I am currently an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy at the City University of Hong Kong, with research/teaching interests in intergovernmental relationships, public personnel management, civic engagement, and institutional analysis. Prior to joining CityU, I studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where I obtained a master’s degree in Public Policy, and at the University of Southern California (USC) where I earned my doctoral degree in Public Policy and Management.

More specifically, my research agenda consists of three major components.  First, I am devoted to providing detailed, up-to-date descriptions of China’s governance conundrums of various sorts. My main argument is that the majority of the emerging governance issues China faces today result from the absence of proper institutions. While top-down reforms addressing these problems are being enforced, their effectiveness turns out to be suboptimal primarily because 1) these reforms are not institutionalized so that their long-term efficacy remains questionable, and 2) these reforms are not matched with sufficient resources, particularly personnel resources, allocated at the local level. Another strand of my research concerns public service motivation (PSM), a popular concept these days in the field of public administration. I am examining, for instance, if individuals’ true levels of PSM (or prosocial motivation in a broadly defined sense) are associated with outcome variables of interest. If PSM is indeed a pragmatically consequential factor, does it function more likely as a moderator or as a main cause? To eliminate confounding explanations, I generally resort to experimental methods for answers. My final research focus centers on exploring whether the “bottom-up logic” still plays a pivotal role in today’s public management in the U.S. I particularly wonder if deliberative democracy can viably influence public administrators who currently operate in a complex institutional context that reflects many divergent values and objectives.