Vivienne Shue
American sinologist
Vivienne Shue, FBA (Chinese: 许慧文; pinyin: Xǔ Huìwén) 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 2008.
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
To Govern China, eds. Patricia M. Thornton and Vivienne Shue (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Paying for Progress in China: Public Finance, Human Welfare and Changing Patterns of Inequality.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18631976. VIAF identifies the subject as 59185184. The Library of Congress control number is n80031893. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008, 1988 and 2017.
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