On 29 September 2026, Dr Zhiqi Xu defended her thesis examining how institutional intermediaries, frontline officials and community members exercise agency in shaping policy adoption, implementation and continuation under China’s poverty alleviation and post-poverty rural development governance.
Xu argued that China’s poverty alleviation governance is best understood as a multi-level process of policy co-production under hierarchy. Agency in this setting, she argues, operates within constraint, with organizational intermediaries aligning innovation with shifting political priorities; frontline officials responding to policy narratives that define who acts, who leads and who bears responsibility; and community members interpreting collective provision through responsibility beliefs shaped by norms, village life and long-term state intervention.
These forms of agency are politically bounded and uneven, but consequential. They shape whether policy ideas become adoptable, whether initiative-taking appears legitimate or risky, and whether collective welfare services can be co-provided and sustained.
Drawing of several case studies in China, she concludes that poverty alleviation outcomes in the country emerged through a layered process in which organizational actors, frontline cadres and rural residents interpreted and enacted policy under constraint.
Rewatch Zhiqi's defence introduction
Photos of the defence
- Researcher
- Related content
