People

Patricia M Thornton

Council Member, BCAS

Associate Professor of Chinese Politics, DPIR
Fellow, Merton College
AFFILIATION
Government and Politics Network
International Relations Network
College
Merton College

I am an associate professor in the Department of Politics (DPIR) and the University of Oxford China Centre, and Tutor in the Politics of China at Merton College. I am currently a Council Member of the British Association for Chinese Studies, having previously served as a member of the East and Inner Asia Council (EAIC, formerly CIAC-- China-Inner Asia Council) of the Association for Asian Studies. I served on the Executive Committee of The China Quarterly's editorial board for ten years, and as its Acting Editor in Chief in 2021. At the University of Oxford's DPIR, I have previously served as Chair of the Sub-Faculty of Politics and International Relations, and Chair of the PPE Committee, which oversees and manages the PPE degree programme at the University of Oxford.

For my up-to-date views and other information on political developments in contemporary China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, follow me on Twitter at @PM_Thornton.

Research

In the broadest possible sense, my research focuses on mapping the interactions—including institutions, practices and networks—between the Party-state and social forces in China over time. In Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence and State-making in Modern China (Harvard, 2007), I argued that the process of state-making in China has been driven both by normative and normalizing goals, and curbed by a conservative calculus that weighs incremental increases in the size and scope of the administration against the projected costs required to support it. The historical result is a minimalist state that relies upon the intermittent mobilisation of social forces to realise a range of ambitious goals.

To produce Identity Matters: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict (Berghahn, 2007), I worked with an international group of Fulbright New Century Scholars to analyse the relationships between collective identity and conflict through a variety of case studies.

In Red Shadows: Memories and Legacies of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2017), Chris Berry (King's College), Sun Peidong (Cornell University, formerly of Fudan University) and I trace the living legacies of China's Cultural Revolution in post-Mao China, 50 years after it began in 1966.

In To Govern China: Evolving Practices of Power (Cambridge, 2017), Vivienne Shue and I assembled an international team of China scholars who seek to move beyond the current consensus regarding contemporary China's adaptive 'authoritarian resilience' in order to explore the cross-cutting currents in ongoing processes of political change in contemporary Chinese governance. More recently, I edited an open-access special issue of The China Quarterly marking the CCP's centenary.

My research interests include:

Government, Constitutions, Institutions and Governments, Groups, Identities and Social Movements, Institutions and organisations, Community, Constitutions and Government, Identity, Institutions and organisations, States

Teaching

At the undergraduate level, I teach the Government and Politics of China option, a further option in comparative politics open to both PPE and HP students at the University of Oxford, and part of the Politics Prelims paper for undergraduates at Merton College. I also teach the DPIR's post-graduate seminar on Chinese politics, open to MSc students in Contemporary Chinese Studies, MPhil students in Modern Chinese Studies and MPhil students in Comparative Government in the DPIR. I also supervise postgraduate students in the MPhil and DPhil in Politics (Comparative Government) programmes working on various aspects of the domestic politics of China.

Supervisees

  • Siu Yau Lee ( 李肇祐 )(DPhil, 2013): "Explaining Institutional Changes in Authoritarian States: Language Management and Resistance in Contemporary China" (currently Associate Professor and Acting Head of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies (APS) of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (FLASS) at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK).)
  • Yu Tao (陶郁) (DPhil, 2015): "Enemies of the State or Friends of the ‘Harmonious Society’? Religious Groups and Collective Protests in Contemporary Rural China" (currently Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Asian Studies and Languages, University of Western Australia)
  • Karita Ching-yeung Kan (靳清揚) (DPhil, 2014): "Contesting Urban Futures: Mapping State-Society Relations in China's Urban Development" (currently Associate Professor, Department of Applied Social Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) 
  • Xibai Xu (徐曦白) (DPhil candidate in Politics) "Fragmented Authoritarianism, Selective Control and the Rise of Entrepreneurial Charity in China"
  • Peng Chun (彭錞) (DPhil in Law, 2015) (co-supervision): "Taming the Dragon: Rural Land Acquisition and its Legal Reform in Modern China" (currently Assistant Professor, Beijing University Law School)
  • Samson Wai-Hei Yuen (袁瑋熙) (DPhil in Politics, 2016): "Partners of Authoritarian Governance: The Politics of Community NGOs in China" (currently Associate Professor at the Department of Government and International Studies of Hong Kong Baptist University.)
  • Sojeong Im (DPhil candidate in Politics) (co-supervision)
  • Shun-yan Olivia Cheung (DPhil, 2018): "Model-making and policy change in China" (currently Research Fellow, SOAS China Institute)
  • Lu Xiaoyu (DPhil, 2019): "Neither local nor global: a political ethnography of storytelling and norm diffusion in the UNDP China" (currently Assistant Professor at School of International Studies at Beijing University)
  • Rowan Alcock (DPhil, 2020): "Polanyi, China and the environmental impasse: unconscious retrogression and conscious advance"
  • Jean Mittelstaedt (DPhil, 2019): "Revolutionizing the Party-state: The 1975 Chinese State Constitution" (currently Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Studies, University of Oxford China Centre)
  • Hu Yuhan (current DPhil candidate)
  • Han Bowen (current MPhil candidate)
  • Ruijie Liu (current MPhil candidate)

Media

Publications

Journal Articles

2024

Thornton, P. (2024) “From ’singing bright prospects’ or ’traversing history’s garbage time’: China struggles with slowing growth”, China Leadership Monitor [Preprint].
Thornton, P. (2024) ““Lying flat-ism”: is the party under Xi ‘governing people to death’?”, China Leadership Monitor, 2024(80).

2023

Thornton, P. (2023) “Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China. By Jeremy L. Wallace. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 288p. US dollars 99.00 cloth, US dollars 29.95 paper”., Perspectives on Politics, 21(4), pp. 1517–1518.
Thornton, P. (2023) “Who’s afraid of Chizuko Ueno? The party’s ongoing counteroffensive against feminism in the Xi era”, China Leadership Monitor, 2023(78).
Thornton, P. (2023) “When grid meets web: how COVID extended the Party-state’s capacity for social control at the grassroots”, China Leadership Monitor, 2023(76).
Thornton, P. (2023) “The A4 movement: mapping its background and impact”, China Leadership Monitor, 2023(75).
Thornton, P. (2023) “Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China Joseph W. Esherick. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022. 314 pp. Open Access. ISBN 9780520385337”, The China Quarterly, 253, pp. 273–274.
Thornton, P. (2023) “From frame of steel to iron cage: the Chinese Communist Party and China’s voluntary sector ”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 51(3), pp. 411–436.
Thornton, P. (2023) “The canary in the coal mine”, New Threats to Academic Freedom in Asia [Preprint].

2022

Thornton, P. (2022) “From Frame of Steel to Iron Cage: The Chinese Communist Party and China’s Voluntary Sector”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 51(3), pp. 411–436.
Thornton, P. (2022) “From Frame of Steel to Iron Cage: The CCP and China’s Voluntary Sector”, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Studies [Preprint].
Thornton, P. (2022) “Revolution and Counterrevolution in China: The Paradoxes of Chinese Struggle Lin Chun London: Verso Books, 2021 343 pp. £25.00 ISBN 978-1-78873-563-6 - China’s Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History Rebecca E. Karl London: Verso Books, 2020 223 pp. £18.99 ISBN 978-1-78873-559-9”, The China Quarterly, 250, pp. 572–574.
Thornton, P. (2022) “China’s Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History”, CHINA QUARTERLY, 250, pp. 572–574.

2021

Thornton, P. (2021) “The January Storm of 1967: from representation to action and back again”, Proletarian China [Preprint]. Edited by I. Franceschini and C. Sorace.
Thornton, P. (2021) “Party all the time: the CCP in comparative and historical perspective”, China Quarterly, 248(S1).
Thornton, P. (2021) “Of constitutions, campaigns and commissions: a century of democratic centralism under the CCP”, China Quarterly, 248(S1), pp. 52–72.
Thornton, P. (2021) “Through the mirror of CCP history: Four perspectives”, China Quarterly, 248(S1), pp. 283–291.
Thornton, P. (2021) “’Unending capitalism: how consumerism negated China’s Communist Revolutio’n Karl Gerth Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 384 pp, £18.99 ISBN 9780521688468”, The China Quarterly, 245, pp. 293–295.

2020

Thornton, P. (2020) “Making it count: Statistics and statecraft in the early People’s Republic of China, Arunabh Ghosh, Princeton, NJ”, China Quarterly, 244, pp. 1168–1169.
Thornton, P. (2020) “State formation in China and Taiwan: Bureaucracy, campaign and performance, Julia C. Strauss Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 ix + 280 pp”., China Quarterly, 241, pp. 272–274.

2018

Thornton, P. (2018) “End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise”, China Quarterly, 235, pp. 878–879.

2017

Thornton, P. (2017) “Maoism at the grassroots: everyday life in China’s era of high socialism edited by Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press vi + 468 pp. USD 49.95; GBP 36.95 ISBN 978-0-674-2820-4”, China Quarterly, 229, pp. 250–251.

2016

Thornton, P., Berry, C. and Sun, P. (2016) “The Cultural Revolution: Memories and legacies 50 years on”, China Quarterly, 227, pp. 604–612.
Thornton, P. (2016) “The Cultural Revolution as a crisis of representation”, China Quarterly, 227, pp. 697–717.
Thornton, P. (2016) “The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976”, CURRENT HISTORY, 115(782), pp. 243–246.
Thornton, P. (2016) “Mao’s Ordinary People”, Current History, 115(782), p. 243.

2015

Thornton, T. and Thornton, P. (2015) “The Mutable, the Mythical, and the Managerial: Raven Narratives and the Anthropocene”, Environment and Society, 6(1), pp. 66–86.
Thornton, P. (2015) “Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979. ANDREW MERTHA . Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2014 xv + 175 pp. $29.95 ISBN 978-0-8014-5265-9”, The China Quarterly, 221, pp. 271–273.

2013

Thornton, P. (2013) “The Advance of the Party: Transformation or Takeover of Urban Grassroots Society?*”, The China Quarterly, 213, pp. 1–18.
Thornton, P. (2013) “Pieke, Frank N. The good communist: elite training and state building in today’s China. ix, 229 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 2010. £55.00 (cloth)”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(1), pp. 203–204.

2012

Thornton, P. (2012) “Mapping dynamic events: popular contention in China over space and time”, Annals of GIS, 18(1), pp. 31–43.
Thornton, P. (2012) “The New Life of the Party: Party-Building and Social Engineering in Greater Shanghai”, CHINA JOURNAL, 68, pp. 58–78.
Thornton, P. (2012) “The Cultural Economy of Falun Gong in China: A Rhetorical Perspective”, CHINA JOURNAL, 67, pp. 225–227.

2011

Thornton, P. (2011) “Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail”, CHINA JOURNAL, 65, pp. 231–233.

2010

Thornton, P. (2010) “From liberating production to unleashing consumption: Mapping landscapes of power in Beijing”, Political Geography, 29(6), pp. 302–310.
Thornton, P. (2010) “Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. Edited by You-Tien Hsing and Ching Kwan Lee. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. xii + 254 pp. £85.00. ISBN 978-0-415-49137-2”, The China Quarterly, 202, pp. 453–455.
Thornton, P. (2010) “Book Reviews Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China. By David A. Palmer. New York:Columbia University Press, 2007 Pp ix+356. $35.50 (cloth)”., History of Religions, 49(4), pp. 426–427.
Thornton, P. (2010) “Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement”, JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES, 69(4), pp. 1213–1215.
Carter, D., Latz, G. and Thornton, P. (2010) “Through a New Lens: Assessing International Learning at Portland State University”, The Journal of General Education, 59(3), pp. 172–181.
Carter, D., Latz, G. and Thornton, P. (2010) “Through a New Lens:”, The Journal of General Education, 59(3), pp. 172–181.

2009

Thornton, P. (2009) “Crisis and Governance: SARS and the Resilience of the Chinese Body Politic”, The China Journal, 61, pp. 23–48.

2002

Thornton, P. (2002) “Framing Dissent in Contemporary China: Irony, Ambiguity and Metonymy”, The China Quarterly, 171, pp. 661–681.
Thornton, P. (2002) “Insinuation, Insult, and Invective: The Threshold of Power and Protest in Modern China”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44(3), pp. 597–619.
Thornton, P. (2002) “Insinuation, insult, and invective: The threshold of power and protest in modern China”, COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN SOCIETY AND HISTORY, 44(3), pp. 597–619.

Books

2017

Shue, V. and Thornton, P. (2017) Introduction: Beyond implicit political dichotomies and linear models of change in China, pp. 1–26.
Shue, V. and Thornton, P. (eds.) (2017) To Govern China. Cambridge University Press, p. 304.
Thornton, P., Sun, P. and Berry, C. (eds.) (2017) Red shadows: memories and legacies of the Chinese cultural revolution. Cambridge University Press.

2007

Thornton, P. (2007) Introduction: Identity matters, pp. 1–13.
Peacock, J., Thornton, P. and Inman, P. (2007) Identity matters: Ethnic and sectarian conflict, pp. 1–244.

Chapters

2019

Thornton, P. (2019) “Cultural Revolution”, in C. Sorace, I. Franceschini, and N. Loubere (eds.) Afterlives of Chinese Communism Political Concepts from Mao to Xi. ANU Press and Verso Books, pp. 58–64.

2017

Shue, V. and Thornton, P. (2017) “Introduction: Beyond Implicit Political Dichotomies and Linear Models of Change in China”, in To Govern China. Cambridge University Press (CUP), pp. 1–26.
Thornton, P. (2017) “A New Urban Underclass? Making and Managing ‘Vulnerable Groups’ in Contemporary China”, in To Govern China. Cambridge University Press (CUP), pp. 257–281.
Thornton, P. (2017) “A new urban underclass? Making and managing ‘vulnerable groups’ in contemporary China”, in To Govern China: Evolving Practices of Power. Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–281.
Thornton, P. (2017) “The New Life of the Party: Party-Building and Social Engineering in Greater Shanghai”, in Critical Readings on the Communist Party of China (4 Vols. Set). Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 1092–1116.
THORNTON, P. and Shue, V. (2017) “Introduction: Beyond implicit political dichotomies and linear models of change in China”, in V. Shue and P. THORNTON (eds.) To Govern China: Evolving Practices of Power. Cambridge University Press.

2016

Thornton, P. (2016) “Looking east: China’s jasmine revolutions in comparative perspective”, in Non-Western Encounters with Democratization: Imagining Democracy after the Arab Spring, pp. 143–161.

2015

Thornton, P. (2015) “Experimenting with party-led ‘people’s society’: four regional models”, in NGO Governance and Management in China. Routledge, pp. 137–150.
Thornton, P. (2015) “Looking east: China’s jasmine revolutions in comparative perspective”, in Non-Western Encounters with Democratization: Imagining Democracy after the Arab Spring. Routledge, pp. 143–162.
Thornton, P. (2015) “Non-traditional security in China”, in L. Dittmer and M. Yu (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Security. Routledge, pp. 64–78.

2011

Thornton, P. (2011) “Retrofitting the steel frame: from mobilizing the masses to surveying the public”, in E. Perry and S. Heilmann (eds.) Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China. Harvard University Council on Asian Studies.

2010

Thornton, P. (2010) “What is to be undone: The making of the middle class in China”, in Beyond the Consumption Bubble. Routledge, pp. 236–250.
Thornton, P. (2010) “The new cybersects: Popular religion, repression and resistance”, in Chinese society: Change, conflict and resistance, pp. 215–238.
Thornton, P. (2010) “Censorship and surveillance in Chinese cyberspace: Beyond the great firewall”, in Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market, pp. 179–198.
Thornton, P. (2010) “What Is to Be Undone: The Making of the Middle Class in China”, in Beyond the Consumption Bubble, pp. 236–249.

2007

Thornton, P. (2007) “Manufacturing sectarian divides: The Chinese state, identities, and collective violence”, in Identity Matters: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict, pp. 171–189.

2004

Thornton, P. (2004) “Comrades and collectives in arms: Tax resistance, evasion, and avoidance strategies in post-Mao China”, in State and Society in 21st-century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation, pp. 87–104.

Others

2019

Thornton, P. (2019) “Book review: Where the Party Rules: The Rank and File of China’s Communist State Daniel Koss Cambridge: Cambridge University Press”, China Quarterly. Cambridge University Press.
Thornton, P. (no date) “Carl Minzner, The End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). The China Quarterly 235 (September 2018).”