China Watchers

ABSTRACT Recent debates have raised concerns about how academia and policy makers alike rely on country experts when trying to understand the politics of authoritarian regimes. This study argues that one possible source of bias is the experts’ network of affiliations and interactions with one another and that we therefore should make the social background and networks of country experts more transparent. We implemented this by examining experts on contemporary Chinese politics using a nomination process to establish a list of 2,200 such experts. We find that US-based and US-educated male academics continue to form the core of this community but that younger cohorts appear to be more diverse in terms of educational background, gender, and geographic location. Our findings provide not only the first analysis of the global China Watcher community but also speak to current debates about the reliability of aggregated expert assessments.