Welcome! I am Professor of International Affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia. I received my Ph.D. in political science from University of California, Berkeley in December 2012. Before Berkeley, I studied at School of International Studies, Peking University, China (1999-2003) and Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore (2003-2006). My research interests are social activism, media politics, political participation, and democratization. My area focus is China.
大家好，我是韩荣斌，在佐治亚大学公共与国际事务学院国际事务系任教授。我于2012年从加州大学伯克利分校获得政治学博士学位。之前我曾在北京大学国际关系学院和新加坡国立大学政治学系学习。我的研究兴趣主要在社会活动、媒体政治、政治参与以及民主化，关注的地区主要是中国。
Please click here for my CV.
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My third book, Make China Great Again Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism is coming out soon, with Columbia UP again! Below is the introduction.
On the Chinese internet, alternate history is booming. Millions of writers and readers fantasize about going back in time and changing their country’s fate. One envisions saving the Southern Song Dynasty from the Mongols and turning China into a capitalist democracy. Another portrays a contemporary traveling to 1905 and sparking a communist revolution before the Chinese Communist Party was even founded. These stories and others like them share a theme of national revival that echoes both the official narrative of the “Chinese dream” and populist movements around the world. Why is alt-history so popular in China, and what does it reveal about politics and culture under authoritarianism? In this book, I examine the production and consumption of online alt-history fiction in China, offering new insight into how authoritarian rule gains popular consent. Combining in-depth digital ethnography with analysis of dozens of alt-history novels, the book explores how state intervention, market forces, and consumer preferences interact. I argue that alt-history literature is a project of imagining an ideal China, which simultaneously legitimizes and contests state ideology. Tracing the popular resonance of the regime’s nationalist vision, I demonstrate how citizens play a crucial role in constructing and maintaining the state’s dominance. Because many see national revival as imminent under the party’s leadership, they are willing to tolerate authoritarian rule, in contrast to Western democracies, where discontent has fueled populist politics. Introducing readers to the uncanny world of alt-history, Make China Great Again underscores how aspirations for the rebirth of the nation can bolster undemocratic politics—in China and elsewhere.
To get the book from Amazon, click here.
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My first book, Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience, examines Internet governance in China. By investigating the struggles over online expression—both as a cat-and-mouse censorship game and from the angle of discourse competition—it makes a two-fold counter-intuitive claim: (1) the Chinese party-state can almost indefinitely co-exist with the expansion of emancipating Internet; (2) but the key explanation for this co-existence does not lie in the state’s capacity to control and adapt, as many have argued, but more so in the pluralization of online expression, which empowers not only regime critics, but also pro-regime voices, particularly pro-state nationalism.
Following the logic in this book, one may better understand authoritarian politics overall. Moreover, I believe it helps explain why the Trump Administration’s China strategy would not weaken authoritarian rule in China, but rather would boost nationalist support for the CCP. Not surprisingly, many in China have called Trump 川建国（”Trump the Nation-Builder”) and his strategy is really making China great.
To get the book from Amazon, click here.
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My second book, with Jason Gainous, Andrew MacDonald, and Kevin Wagner, draws on original survey data and rich qualitative sources to explore how authoritarian regimes employ the strategy of “directed digital dissidence” to work the flow of online information to their advantage. We argue that the central Chinese government successfully directs citizen dissent toward local governments, local officials, and other actors such as foreign governments and media. Consequently, the Internet functions to discipline local state agents, vent nationalist sentiments, and help project a benevolent and positive image of the central government and the regime as a whole. With an in-depth look at the COVID-19 and Xinjiang Cotton cases, the authors demonstrate how the Chinese state employs directed digital dissidence and discuss the impact and limitations of China’s information strategy.
To get the book from Amazon, click here.
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I also co-edited The Xi Jinping Effect (University of Washington Press, 2024) with Ashley Esary. You can get the book from Amazon (click here) or University of Washington Press (click here for the open access version). 
The Xi Jinping Effect explores the relationship between the People’s Republic of China’s current “paramount leader”—arguably the most powerful figure since Mao Zedong (1893–1976)—and multiple areas of political and social transformation. It illuminates not just policy arenas in which his leadership of China has had an outsized impact but also areas where his initiatives have faltered due to unintended consequences, international pushback, or the divergence of local priorities from those of the central government. Collectively, the book’s chapters document the ways in which Xi’s neo-totalitarianism has dismantled Reform Era legacies, while reconfiguring governance and rewiring China’s global connections. Contributions by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists consider such issues as Xi’s anticorruption campaign and obsession with ideological governance, state surveillance, the status of ethnic minorities and migrants, income inequality, and China’s relations with Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
To access my profile on Google Scholar, Research Gate and SSRN:
Media coverage & public exposure:
Yi-ling Liu, Waving goodbye to Weibo, Rest of World, December 21, 2020.
The Economist, The year of the rat-fink Some people in China help the party police the internet, January 18, 2020.
Washington Post, The Cybersecurity 202: U.S. officials: It’s China hacking that keeps us up at night, March 6, 2019.
Rongbin Han 