Dr Tao Wang
Key information
- Roles
- Research Associate
- Qualifications
- MA (Oklahoma), PhD (Manchester)
- Email address
- T.Wang@mmu.ac.uk
Biography
Tao Wang is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, and Lecturer in Political Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University.
His research centres on public opinion, propaganda, and political representation, with a regional focus on East Asia. Currently, he works on cross-strait relations, particularly examining the Chinese public’s (un)willingness to go to war against Taiwan. He is also developing a book manuscript on Taiwan’s political representation, investigating how social norms such as guanxiand mianzi shape constituency service.
Tao has published widely in academic and policy journals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, the British Journal of Social Psychology, and the Journal of Contemporary China. His commentaries have appeared in Bloomberg, The Financial Times, and The Guardian, among others.
Key publications
Op-eds
• “China’s Public Wants to Make a Living, Not War.” Foreign Policy. 21 March 2024.
• “Will China Seize Taiwan?” With Peter Hays Gries. Foreign Affairs. 15 February 2019.
• “Taiwan’s Midterm Elections: How Did the Chinese View Them?” Northern England Policy Centre for the Asia Pacific Policy Brief, 2018(2): 1-3. 2018.
Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles
• “The Enemy Behind the Scenes: How China’s Propaganda Shores up Support for Russia’s War in Ukraine.” With Han-Yu Hsu. British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Forthcoming.
• “Opposite Effects of RWA and SDO on War Support: Chinese Public Opinion Toward Russia’s War in Ukraine.” With Han-Yu Hsu. British Journal of Social Psychology, 63, 839–856. 2024.
• “Popular Nationalism and China’s Japan Policy: The Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands Controversy, 2012-2013.” With Peter Hays Gries and Derek Steiger. Journal of Contemporary China,(25)98: 264-276. 2016.
• “Was John Stuart Mill a Pluralist?” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 12(2): 278-294. 2017.
Research interests
Cross-Strait relations; Chinese politics; Taiwanese political representation; political communication; authoritarian politics.