He is the recent author of two books Charting the Roots of Anti-Chinese Populism in Africa, co-authored with Richard Aidoo (New York: Springer, 2015), and Authoritarian Landscapes: Popular Mobilization and the Institutional Sources of Resilience in Nondemocracies (New York: Springer, 2013). His research interests include contentious politics in non-democratic regimes and Sino-African foreign relations. This article is an excerpt of longer research article titled, “Decentralized Meritocracy: Resilience, Decay, and Adaptation in the CCP’s Threat-Management System,” published online in Problems of Post-Communism in May 2016. Image Credit: CC by Jorge Láscar/Flickr.