Associate Professor of Government Alexsia Chan recently discussed the research that went into her book Beyond Coercion: The Politics of Inequality in China, in a talk sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and the Political Science Department at Clark University.
Beyond Coercion, published in June by Cambridge University Press, offers a new perspective on mechanisms of social control practiced by authoritarian regimes. In the book, Chan presents an original theory and concept of political atomization, which explains how the state maintains social control and entrenches structural inequality. She also examines the continued lack of access to urban public services among China’s migrant workers – despite national directives to incorporate them into cities, as well as worker shortages and labor unrest.
Analyzing how policies designed to expand workers’ rights instead undermine their claims to benefits, Chan argues that local governments provide public services for migrants using a process of political individualization that enables the state to exercise control beyond coercion by atomizing those who might otherwise mobilize against it.
Earlier in the fall Chan presented a similar talk for the University of Hawaii’s Department of Asian Studies. She also recently received a Fulbright ASEAN Scholar award.
Posted December 10, 2025
