Guoer Liu

Assistant Professor

I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. I study the politics of measurement: how governments shape what gets measured and known. My research sits at the intersection of political institutions, technology, and environmental politics, with a regional focus on China. I also work on political methodology, focusing on causal inference and survey experiments.

My book, Monopolizing Transparency, shows how China uses technology as a political strategy—creating apparent separation between the regime and environmental data while maintaining control through upstream infrastructure design, masking political choices behind technical objectivity.