James Leibold is a Associate Professor in Chinese Politics and Asian Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include Chinese nationalism, ethnic relations, and ethnic policy and ethnic identity articulation on the Chinese Internet. He is the author of Ethnic Policy in China: Is Reform Inevitable? (East-West Center, 2013) and Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and its Indigenes Became Chinese (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and co-editor (with Chen Yangbin) of Minority Education in China: Balancing Unity and Diversity in an Era of Critical Pluralism (Hong Kong University Press, 2014) and (with Thomas Mullaney, Stéphane Gros, and Eric Vanden Bussche), Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China’s Majority (University of California Press, 2012). His work has also appeared in The Journal of Asian Studies, The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Modern China, and other publications.

Last Updated: June 27, 2017

Conversation

06.04.18

How Should the World Respond to Intensifying Repression in Xinjiang?

Rian Thum, Rachel Harris & more
Deliberate, systematic human rights abuses are happening in China’s northwest. Reporting and research published in recent weeks shows that the Chinese government is targeting the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region’s roughly 11 million Muslims for “re...

Viewpoint

06.26.17

Why Are So Many Tibetans Moving to Chinese Cities?

Gerald Roche, Ben Hillman & more
China’s Tibetan areas have been troubled by unrest since 2008, when protests swept the plateau, followed by a series of self-immolations which continue to this day. The Chinese state, as part of its arsenal of responses, has intensified urbanization...

Viewpoint

02.04.15

Why China Is Banning Islamic Veils

Timothy Grose & James Leibold
This week, regional authorities outlawed Islamic veils from all public spaces in the regional capital of China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The Urumqi ban, which went into effect on Sunday February 1 (coincidentally the third annual*...

Conversation

02.13.14

Are Ethnic Tensions on the Rise in China?

Enze Han, James Palmer & more
On December 31, President Xi Jinping appeared on CCTV and extended his “New Year’s wishes to Chinese of all ethnic groups.” On January 15, Beijing officials detained Ilham Tohti, a leading Uighur economist and subsequently accused him of “separtist...