Stanley Rosen is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California (USC), specializing in Chinese politics and society. He was the Faculty Master of University Residential College at Bimkrant, an honors college for USC’s best incoming students, from 2011 to 2017. Rosen lived on campus for 29 years as a resident faculty member. He studied Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong and has traveled to mainland China around 65 times in the last 40 years. His courses range from Chinese politics and Chinese film to political change in Asia, East Asian societies, comparative politics, and politics and film in comparative perspective.

The author or editor of nine books and many articles, Rosen has written on such topics as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, and film and the media. He has been the editor (now co-editor) of Chinese Education and Society since 1983. His most recent books include Soft Power with Chinese Characteristics: China’s Campaign for Hearts and Minds (Routledge, 2020) (co-edited with Kingsley Edney and Ying Zhu); Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market (Routledge, 2010) (co-edited with Peter Hays Gries); and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema (Hong Kong University Press, 2010) (co-edited with Ying Zhu). Ongoing projects include a study of the changing attitudes and behavior of Chinese youth and a study of Hollywood films in China and the prospects for Chinese films on the international market, particularly in the North America.

In addition to his academic activities at USC, Rosen has escorted thirteen delegations to China for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (including American university presidents, professional associations, and Fulbright groups).

He is an affiliated research scholar at Beijing Normal University’s Research Institute for Chinese Culture and International Communications and was previously a member of the international advisory board of Shanghai University’s Center for Media Studies and the Humanities Studies Center of Zhongshan University (Taiwan). He has consulted for the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the Los Angeles Public Defenders Office, and a number of private corporations, law firms, and U.S. government agencies.

Last Updated: January 26, 2022

Conversation

01.28.22

The Olympics Return to Beijing

Sam Crane, Maya Wang & more
In February Beijing will host the Olympic Games again, this time amid a surging pandemic, a new wave of lockdowns, at least 10 diplomatic boycotts, and international alarm at the disappearance of one of the country’s top athletes. “Together for a...

Conversation

04.11.18

China’s Communist Party Takes (Even More) Control of the Media

Stanley Rosen, Chris Fenton & more
China’s Communist Party made moves last month to solidify and formalize its (already substantial) control over the country’s media. China’s main state-run broadcasters are to be consolidated into a massive new “Voice of China” under the management...

Conversation

02.23.17

Can China Expand its Beachhead in Hollywood?

Stanley Rosen, Ying Zhu & more
With The Great Wall, a classic army vs. monsters tale, director Zhang Yimou has brought America the most expensive Chinese film ever created. The movie may be backed by a Hollywood studio and it may star no less an American icon than Matt Damon, and...

Conversation

01.13.16

Does Chinese Investment Pose a Threat to Hollywood?

Jonathan Landreth, Stanley Rosen & more
The Wanda Group, China’s leading real estate developer, on Monday paid $3.5 billion for a controlling stake in Hollywood studio Legendary Entertainment, maker of Jurassic World, among other global blockbusters. At a time when Hollywood is...

Conversation

11.12.14

Xi Jinping’s Culture Wars

Stanley Rosen, Michael Berry & more
Given China’s tightening restrictions on film, TV, art, writing, and journalism, and the reverberations from President Xi Jinping’s recent speech on culture, we asked contributors why they think Beijing has decided to ramp up its involvement in the...

Conversation

09.24.13

A Shark Called Wanda—Will Hollywood Swallow the Chinese Dream Whole?

Stanley Rosen, Jonathan Landreth & more
Stanley Rosen:Wang Jianlin, who personally doesn’t know much about film, made a splash when he purchased America’s No. 2 movie theater chain AMC at a price many thought far too high for what he was getting.  A number of knowledgeable people...

Books

04.01.10

Chinese Politics

Stanley Rosen
Written by a team of leading China scholars, this text interrogates the dynamics of state power and legitimation in 21st-century China. Despite the continuing economic successes and rising international prestige of China there has been increasing social protests over corruption, land seizures, environmental concerns, and homeowner movements. Such political contestation presents an opportunity to explore the changes occurring in China today—what are the goals of political contestation, how are Chinese Communist Party leaders legitimizing their rule, who are the specific actors involved in contesting state legitimacy today and what are the implications of changing state-society relations for the future viability of the People’s Republic?  —Routledge

Books

03.15.10

Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema

Stanley Rosen
Art, politics, and commerce are intertwined everywhere, but in China the interplay is explicit, intimate, and elemental, and nowhere more so than in the film industry. Understanding this interplay in the era of market reform and globalization is essential to understanding mainland Chinese cinema. This interdisciplinary book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of Chinese cinema, surveying the evolution of film production and consumption in mainland China as a product of shifting relations between art, politics, and commerce. Within these arenas, each of the twelve chapters treats a particular history, development, genre, filmmaker or generation of filmmakers, adding up to a distinctively comprehensive rendering of Chinese cinema. The book illuminates China’s changing state-society relations, the trajectory of marketization and globalization, the effects of China’s stark historical shifts, Hollywood’s role, the role of nationalism, and related themes of interest to scholars of Asian studies, cinema and media studies, political science, sociology, comparative literature and Chinese language. Contributors include Ying Zhu, Stanley Rosen, Seio Nakajima, Zhiwei Xiao, Shujen Wang, Paul Clark, Stephen Teo, John Lent, Ying Xu, Yingjin Zhang, Bruce Robinson, Liyan Qin, and Shuqin Cui.  —Hong Kong University Press