Professor Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt (who goes by “Chris”) is a political scientist specialising in the politics of China. He earned his BA in International Politics from the School of International Studies at Peking University in 2014 and completed his Master’s degree in International Affairs at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) in 2016. He received his DPhil (PhD) in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2019 with a dissertation analysing China’s 1975 State Constitution, undertaken at the Department of Politics and International Relations. During this time, he also conducted extended research at East China Normal University in Shanghai.

In 2019, Professor Mittelstaedt was appointed Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Studies at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, a position he held until 2024. During this period, he served as Director of the MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies and, from 2023 to 2024, also as Course Director of the MSc & MPhil Programme in Chinese Studies. From September 2024 to August 2025, he held a Lectureship (equivalent to Assistant Professorship) in the Politics of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. In these roles, he taught core courses on Chinese politics, international relations, law, governance, and ideology, and contributed lectures and seminars to modules on modern Chinese history, political economy, comparative authoritarianism, and political analysis at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Professor Mittelstaedt joined the University of Zurich as Associate Professor in September 2025.

Professor Mittelstaedt’s research explores how China’s authoritarian institutions are created, organised, maintained, and reproduced, with a particular focus on the ideological and institutional foundations of Party rule. His work is structured around two primary clusters: Party governance and cultural governance. In the first, he examines how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) governs through technologies of control such as intra-Party regulation, disciplinary enforcement, digital infrastructure, law, and grassroots mobilisation, with particular attention to institutional fragmentation and organisational adaptation. In the second, he studies how the Party-state constructs and defends dominant cultural and historical narratives to maintain ideological coherence, assert authority, and suppress dissenting forms of meaning-making.

This research cluster investigates the Chinese Communist Party’s evolving relationship with itself and its environment, including the state bureaucracy, society, economy, law, and transnational domains. It focuses on how the CCP seeks to consolidate control internally while adapting to (and shaping) its external environment.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Intra-Party regulation, disciplinary enforcement, and mechanisms of organisational control
• The theory and practice of Party-building
• New theoretical approaches to understanding ideology
• Local governance innovations and the spatial reconfiguration of Party authority
• Varieties of governance, including organisational adaptation, temporal strategies, and modular organisational forms

This cluster also expands to examine “Party+” as a mode of governance, capturing how the CCP embeds itself across diverse sectors (such as law, the private economy, and foreign policy, among others) thereby reshaping both institutional and ideational boundaries.

This strand of research examines the role of culture as a key site of ideological production and contestation in contemporary China. It focuses on how the Party-state constructs, manages, and defends dominant narratives, often in tension with alternative interpretations of history, identity, and meaning.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• The Party-state’s conceptualisation of nihilism, with a focus on the governance of history
• The emergence and consolidation of Xi Jinping Cultural Thought
• The politics of culture and cultural authority in post-reform China
• The securitisation of cultural discourse, “hostile forces”, and moral panics
• The instrumentalisation of literature, education, and media in ideological reproduction

This cluster is also expanding to examine how meaning is produced, negotiated, and contested beyond official institutions, with a focus on the role of subcultures, intellectuals, and cultural actors in the evolving landscape of knowledge production under authoritarian conditions.

Peer-reviewed

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2024. Intra-Party rules: Rebuilding the CCP’s Political Ecology. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs.

Mittelstaedt, J.C. and Patricia M. Thornton, 2024. "How to Think Xi Jinping Thought" in State and Society in the 21st Century China, Edited by Stanley Rosen and Daniel Lynch. Routledge.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2024. Culture For the Masses: Building Grassroots Cultural Infrastructure in China. Modern China.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2023. Party-Building through Ideological Campaigns under Xi Jinping. Asian Survey, 63(5): pp.716–742.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2023. From social management to mobilisation: The evolving grid management system in Shenzhen. China Perspectives, (133), pp.41-50.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2022. The grid management system in contemporary China: Grass-roots governance in social surveillance and service provision. China Information, 36(1), pp.3-22.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2021. Rebuilding authority: the Party's relationship with its grassroots organizations. The China Quarterly, 248(S1), pp.244-264.

Book reviews

Mittelstaedt J.C., 2024. The Chinese Communist Party: A 100-Year Trajectory Edited by Jérôme Doyon and Chloé Froissart. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2024. ix + 454 pp. AU$59.95 (also available Open Access). ISBN 9781760466237. The China Quarterly. Published online 2024:1-2.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2023. The Party Leads All: The Evolving Role of the Chinese Communist Party Edited by Jacques DeLisle and Guobin Yang. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. viii+ 427 pp. $49.79;£ 45.15 (pbk). ISBN 9780815739517. The China Quarterly, 254, pp.511-512.

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2023. Puppets or Agents?" Thugs-for-Hire" and Brokers between State and Society. Asia Policy, 30(1), pp.175-178

Reports (not peer-reviewed)

Mittelstaedt, J. C. (2025). Battling Nihilism: The PRC’s Quest for Autonomy. China Brief. Volume: 25 Issue: 6 (The Jamestown Foundation).

Mittelstaedt, J.C., 2017. China’s ‘New Era’: Between Continuity and Disruption. China’s ‘New Era’ with Xi Jinping Characteristics,” China Analysis.