Yun Ai is a research associate and post-doc at the National Institute of Social Development, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her current research focuses on China's urbanization processes.

Tonio Andrade is professor of Chinese and global history at Emory University and lives in Decatur, Georgia, USA.

David Bachman is the Henry M. Jackson professor of international studies at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, and is working on studies of China's defence industries.

Lucien Bianco retired as professor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris. His most recent book, La récidive: révolution russe, révolution chinoise, is due in September 2014 at Editions Gallimard, Paris.

An Chen is associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

Ming-chin Monique Chu is a research fellow at St. Antony's College and post-doctoral research officer in Taiwan studies at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford. Her research interests include the impact of production globalization on security, media and politics, notions of sovereignty and contested states, China's foreign relations, cross-Strait relations, and Taiwan's external relations. She is author of The East Asian Computer Chip War (Routledge, 2013).

Julia Chuang is a post-doctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Christopher A. Daily teaches Chinese religions and critical theory and the study of religions at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China.

Deborah Davis is a professor of sociology at Yale University. Her most recent publications are “Demographic Challenges for a Rising China,” Daedalus (April 2014), Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Sexuality and Marriage in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China (Stanford University Press, 2014) co-edited with Sara L. Friedman, “Privatization of Marriage in Postsocialist China” forthcoming in Modern China and “How Dynamics of Urbanization Affect Physical and Mental Health in Urban China,” forthcoming in The China Quarterly, with Juan Chen, Shuo Chen and Pierre Landry.

Frank Dikötter moved to the University of Hong Kong as chair professor of humanities in 2007, after many years at SOAS, University of London, as professor of history. He is the author of nine books, from The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford, 1992) to the more recent Mao's Great Famine (Bloomsbury, 2010), which won the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2011. The Tragedy of Liberation was short-listed for the Orwell Prize.

Wendy Dobson is professor and director, Rotman Institute for International Business, University of Toronto. She is a former associate deputy minister of Finance in the Canadian government and chair of the Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) research network. Her publications include “Will the renminbi become a world currency?” (2009), “The contradiction in China's banking reforms” (2005) and “Chinese SOEs and Canadian FDI Policy” (2014).

Thierry Dodin is a scholar of Tibetan and Himalayan studies associated to the University of Bonn in Germany. He is a former director of the Tibet Information Network and the current director of TibetInfoNet.

Andrew M. Fischer is associate professor of development studies at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, part of Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He has been researching regional economic development strategies in the minority areas of western China since 2001, including almost two years of accumulated fieldwork. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Douglas B. Fuller is a professor in the department of business administration at Zhejiang University's School of Management. His main research interests are the political economy of development, technology strategy and comparative technology policy with a regional focus on East Asia.

Xuezhi Guo is professor of political science and East Asian studies at Guilford College. He is the author of China's Security State: Philosophy, Evolution, and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and The Ideal Chinese Political Leader: A Historical and Cultural Perspective (Praeger, 2002).

Thomas Heberer is professor of political science at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and senior professor of East Asian Politics at the University Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Working on issues of China's political system, local governance, private entrepreneurship, local cadres, political culture and ethnic minorities, he has been conducting field research in China on an annual basis since1981.

James Hevia is professor of history and director of the international studies program at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire Building in Asia. His current research involves animal labour, environmental change and colonial warfare.

Wing-Chung Ho is associate professor at department of applied social sciences, City University of Hong Kong. He has published extensively in community studies in Chinese societies. His academic articles appeared in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, The Canadian Review of Sociology, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Modern Asian Studies, Journal of Social History and The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.

Beverley Hooper is emeritus professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sheffield and is currently completing a book on the Western community(ies) in Maoist China. Her publications include China Stands Up: Ending the Western Presence, 1948–50 (Allen & Unwin, 1986) and writings on youth, gender and consumer issues in the reform era.

Chin-Hao Huang is a doctoral candidate in political science and international relations at the University of Southern California.

Patrick James is the Dornsife Dean's professor of international relations and director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California.

David M. Lampton is Hyman professor and director of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His most recent book is Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping (University of California Press, 2014).

Konrad M. Lawson is a lecturer in modern history at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Ma Ran is associate professor currently teaching at the “Japan-in-Asia” Cultural Studies Program at Nagoya University, Japan. Her research interests include film festival studies and Asian independent cinema.

Colin Mackerras is professor emeritus at Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. He has published widely on subjects relating to China. Among his main topics are ethnicity and the ethnic minorities in contemporary China, on which he has authored four books, in particular China's Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the Twentieth Century, (Oxford University Press, 1994), and edited others.

Scott Moore is Giorgio Ruffolo post-doctoral research fellow in sustainability science with the sustainability science program and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He was formerly a Ford Foundation Guest Researcher at the John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution, during which time this research was completed.

Rachel Murphy is university lecturer in the sociology of China at Oxford. Her interests include migration, urbanisation and population policy.

Suzanne Ogden, professor of political science at Northeastern University and an associate in research at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, is a China specialist who has focused primarily on the interplay of culture, development, and politics. She is best known for her books Inklings of Democracy in China; China's Unresolved Issues; 11 editions of Global Studies: China; and China's Search for Democracy: The Student and Mass Movement of 1989 (the last with Kate Hartford, Lawrence Sullivan and David Zweig). Her research now focuses on China's role in the Greater Mekong Subregion of Southeast Asia.

Yang Shen is a PhD candidate in gender studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London. Her current research focuses on peasant migrant workers in the catering sector in Shanghai. Her research interests cover gender and work, migration studies, contemporary China Studies, and qualitative research methods.

Jonathan Sullivan is associate professor and deputy director of the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, UK.

Istvan Tarrosy is assistant professor in the department of political science and international studies, and director of the Africa Research Centre at the University of Pecs, Hungary.

Leslie K. Wang is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests include family, gender and childhood in China. She is currently revising a book based on an ethnography of orphanage care in China.

Yuhua Wang is an assistant professor in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Tying the Autocrat's Hands: The Rise of the Rule of Law in China (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). His articles have appeared or will appear in the China Journal, China Review, The China Quarterly, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Journal of Peking University (Beijing daxue xuebao), and Studies in Comparative International Development.

Felix Wemheuer is professor for modern China studies at the University of Cologne. He has published several articles and books on the Great Leap Forward including Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union (Yale University Press, 2014).

Chengzhi Yi is associate professor of political science at East China University of Political Science and Law, and visiting scholar in University of Oxford China Center. His research interests include the peasants’ citizenship, state-society relationship, public service supply and urban governance in contemporary China. His current project focuses on how public service resources are allocated in metropolitan rural–urban fringe zones of China. He is the author of Urbanization, State-building and Peasants’ Citizenship Analysis in Contemporary China (Beijing: Central Compilation & Translation Press, 2013).

Douglas Zhihua Zeng is a senior economist at the World Bank and a global expert on macroeconomic and industrial policies, cluster/industrial park development, innovation and competitiveness, as well as knowledge economy. Prior to joining the World Bank in 1998, he worked at Stanford University (Ford Foundation scholar) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (economist), focusing on economic policy research and advisory work for China and the Asia-Pacific region.

Yingjin Zhang is professor of Chinese literature at University of California, San Diego. His recent books include From Underground to Independent (2006), Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010), Chinese Film Stars (2010), A Companion to Chinese Cinema (2012), New Chinese-Language Documentaries: Ethics, Subject and Place (Routledge, 2014).

Yue Zhang is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation: Beijing, Chicago, and Paris (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

Xueguang Zhou is a professor of sociology at Stanford University. He conducts research on the bureaucratic state and governance in China.