Thought Leadership

Professor Jiangnan Zhu, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, continues to surpass her own originally modest expectations through excellence in research, teaching, mentoring and publishing.

Growing up in mainland China, Professor Jiangnan Zhu, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration in the Faculty of Social Sciences, set firm boundaries around the extent of her future career.

“I remember very clearly, when I was in secondary school, I told my parents: ‘I’m sure I won’t go to grad school,’” she recalls. “I told them, I only want to have a bachelor’s degree. I don’t want to study for a Master’s or for a PhD.’

Fast forward a few decades, and Professor Zhu not only holds double bachelor degrees in International Relations and Economics, an M. S. of Mathematical Models of Social Sciences and a PhD in Political Science, she has also just been awarded the Rosie Young 90 Medal for Outstanding Young Woman Scholar 2025, a prize that celebrates exceptional female academics who demonstrate excellence and leadership.

“I’m very, very grateful, for this award,” says Professor Zhu. “I appreciate the University, and also President Zhang for establishing this award, and also the donors, the steering committee of the awards committee. I want to also particularly thank Dean Wen, and also my department head, Professor Thomson, for nominating me for this award. I really received it with a deep respect. It is a very prestigious award, and Professor Rosie Young is such a legendary figure. I really felt deeply inspired by her. It’s recognition of all the female scholars at the University of Hong Kong – I don’t consider this as just my own achievement. It’s a big recognition to what I have achieved, but I’m just very ordinary.”

A String of Accolades

The award is far from the only accolade Professor Zhu has received. Within HKU, her teaching and mentoring excellence, contributions to curriculum development and international collaborations have won her impressive levels of recognition. She was awarded two Teaching Development Grants and the Social Sciences Outstanding E-Learning Award for the 2020-21 academic year for her excellence in teaching. Within the university, she has supervised nine RPg students, several of whom are now working or studying at top universities such as Yale University and the National University of Singapore, and she was awarded the Social Sciences Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award in 2024.

As Coordinator of the Contemporary China Studies Major programme, she has played a leading role in designing the curriculum, and she helms the HKU-PKU PPE Dual Degree programme which encourages interdisciplinary learning and collaboration between HKU and Peking University, her alma mater.

A Wide Range of Impact

Her research focuses on Chinese politics, particularly corruption and anticorruption, and has been published in leading academic journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Public Administration Review and Comparative Political Studies. She serves as editor of the Journal of Chinese Political Science and sits on the board of several other prestigious journals. Her insights reach beyond HKU and beyond academia through keynote lectures delivered at Columbia University, King’s College London, Seoul National University and Peking University, as well as at the National Summit Forum on Anti-Money Laundering in Shanghai and the Future China Global Forum in Singapore.

Cambridge University Press will soon publish her book, “Bribery as a Third Path to Power? Political Selection in China Beyond Performance and Patronage,” which examines the interplay between corruption and political career advancement in China.

From Modest Expectations

So what happened to that girl who had such modest aspirations for her future to turn her into the high-achieving academic success she is today? After earning her doctoral degree, she began her academic career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, where the support of gifted colleagues across departments helped her quickly grow from a new Ph.D. into a confident faculty member.  A key moment that truly accelerated her career came in 2012, when she joined HKU, which she had identified as perfectly aligned with her research aspirations.

“Here, we have abundant resources to do research on Chinese politics,” she explains. “And we also benefit from working with world-class colleagues and very talented graduate and undergraduate students.”

Dreaming Bigger

But she traces the seed of her success to long before that: to deeply supportive parents who encouraged her to follow whatever path interested her. Both her parents were high school teachers who read widely, followed the news avidly and took Zhu on regular travels around China. She credits that outwardly focused environment with opening her mind to the possibilities of success. Zhu applied to Peking University and chose to major in international relations, with an eye to becoming a journalist.

“You tend to dream bigger,” she says. “I’ve got very inspiring parents. They were very encouraging and I enjoyed chatting with my parents. At the same time, they never gave me any pressure. I wouldn’t say I came from an academic family, but definitely an intellectual family.”

At Peking University, she found herself surrounded by exceptionally outstanding peers. “It’s a moment where you have to learn how to thrive in an environment surrounded by top talents,” she recalls. “Once you do, you become stronger, both in mindset and in heart. I think that prepared me for later studies at Northwestern University and working at HKU,” she adds.

The new China Center for Economic Research had just opened at Peking University, led by an exciting team of young economists, including Lin Yifu, who later became the first Chinese Senior Vice-President of the World Bank. She signed up for a second major, in Economics.

“I started to see what world-leading scholarly frontier research is like,” she recalls. “That was really a big moment. I suddenly realized, okay, this is the kind of career that I want to have.”

Consolidating her Research Focus

Already intrigued by the topic of corruption in Chinese politics, she met Dr. Victor Shih, an authority on the subject, while at Northwestern University. He read a term paper she had written about corruption in China and offered to become her thesis supervisor. That mentorship cemented her focus on corruption as her topic of future research.

Soon after, she met Professor Shi Tianjian, another well-known scholar of Chinese politics at a conference. Their half-hour conversation about how to approach a research topic had a seismic impact on Zhu’s future prolific research-writing abilities.

“From that one conversation, I just suddenly felt I know more about how to write, how to write a good paper, how to tell the stories well,” she says. “That’s probably what a master class could be.”

More lessons followed. In 2009, she became a mother for the first time, which pushed her to recognise that time is precious and not unlimited. As ever, she took the lesson and ran with it.

“I suddenly became more productive,” she says. “And I think this is probably a very unique story that a female scholar can share. I always share this, especially with young female PhD students: Don’t be afraid of having a baby, having children. Actually, having children can make you more productive.”

So far in her journey, Professor Zhu has turned every challenge into a valuable learning experience to teach herself and those she mentors and influences. Her colleagues, mentees and peers can only wait to see what she will accomplish and share next.

Contributing writer: Liana Cafolla