Vivienne Shue


Vivienne Shue, FBA is Emeritus Leverhulme Professor of Contemporary China Studies at Oxford University. She specializes in Chinese politics and society, local governance and patterns of state-society interaction. Shue received her B.A. from Vassar College, her B.Litt. from Oxford after she was awarded the Marshall Scholarship and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She was elected to the British Academy in 2002.

''The Reach of the State''

Shue is best known for her book The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic, which was published by Stanford University Press in 1988. The book "changed the field" by arguing that the Chinese government could only be understood in the context of its history, the relations between the centre and the periphery and the continuing role of elites.

Books