Matt DeButts

Excited to share that the Mandarin-language version of my book is being published April 1 in Taiwan !

I’m hiring a predoc starting this summer. The focus is building AI workflows to improve research efficiency. More importantly, I value independent thinking and ambition. You do not need to fit into a narrow topic. If you’re interested in applied statistics, causal inference, or Chinese politics, broadly defined, plz apply. You can propose your own project --- I will support it. iriss.stanford.edu/predoc/2026-27…

The quirky Ma Qianzu explains why the Chinese internet is so frustrating to read: there’s little actual analysis, only a straightjacketed state media and a proliferation of dramatic narratives And a metaphor from a great interview by @afrazhaowang afraw.substack.com/p/first-dig-th…

New paper with @xuxupolitics in @PNASNexus: China origin LLMs refuse political questions at dramatically higher rates than US models — BaiChuan refused 60% of prompts, DeepSeek 36%. This holds in Chinese and English, ow.ly/vmfp50Yl8KC

Thanks to UW IT for inviting me to present my Polymarket data collection pipeline at Google Cloud Platform Research Day. Pipeline enabled by cloud computing: $40B in volume, 500M trades, and 1.25M comments with continuous collection. Preprints and public datasets coming soon!

At this point, we should all pause on whatever we are doing---for a month---to reassess and redesign our workflow, then resume. ⏸️🛠️▶️ I know this is difficult, but the payoff will be large.

Join us on February 13 (Friday) at 1pm EST for a presentation on “Media Patronage: How Authoritarian Regimes Exploit Media Competition to Shape Global Information“ by @debutts and @jenjpan. Discussants: @MariaRepnikova and @dstreisman. Zoom link: chinesepoliticsresearchinprogress.com/schedule/

for the latest @WIRED issue, I wrote about China’s Industrial Party movement and its signature intellectual product, Morning Star of Lingao, a sprawling, effectively never-ending sci-fi project created collaboratively on the Chinese internet. The premise is wild: 500 people time-travel back to the Ming dynasty to industrialize China. in the piece, I mentioned that there was no English translation to be found. Well, it turns out that wasn’t entirely true. someone took it on as a passion project, translated the canonical chapters (with Gemini 2.5 Pro), built a GitHub repo covering all 2,876 chapters, and even created a dedicated website for the translated version. links in reply.

Postdoc Opportunity at @NorthwesternU @NU_SoC @BuffettInst! Our Global LLM Values Benchmarking Working Group is seeking a postdoc starting Summer 2026. If you are working on LLMs and computational social science, this may be for you. Apply by Jan 16, 2026👉comap@northwestern.edu

UM is lucky to have him!!!

Big thanks to @perryworldhouse and @ForeignAffairs for this honor! I'm excited to share my research on how China is (and isn't!) using aid for influence in international organizations with a broader audience.

It’s been a while since I last reported in Chinese! And if you haven’t heard: foreign labor in the U.S. now comes with a $100,000 price tag. Here’s the story behind it: theinitium.com/article/202510… #h1b

So excited to be joining @StanfordData! My ~data science~ journey continues (but still a journalist at heart! "别忘初心" as they say) datascience.stanford.edu/news/welcome-o…

my novel is out today. here I am, holding the last draft and the first draft, 10 years apart. thank you, thank you all for reading 🏡🩷

Excited to share our new @AJPS_Editor paper! We analyze 5M+ Douyin videos from 18K+ regime-affiliated accounts and show how propaganda is now produced and spread through a decentralized model on social media. Four years of work with an incredible team: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aj…

Timely research from my colleague and friend in Stanford political science @AliciaRrChen

"It's made me much more proud and self-aware that I was born to parents who are Chinese. It's a language that I've worked really, really hard to master, and it's a world that will never leave me." npr.org/2025/03/19/nx-…

DC peeps! I'm at Politics and Prose to discuss my new book on China, on March 27 at 7 PM. politics-prose.com/emily-feng

@IC2S2 @MarcKeuschnigg @arvidmartin @Sonia_Yeh @TheYuanLiao I think the portal might be broken right now...?

🚀The IC2S2'25 website is LIVE, and submissions are OPEN! 📍Norrköping, Sweden | July 21-24, 2025 Call for Abstracts - DDL: Feb 24, 2025 Call for Tutorials - DDL: Jan 17, 2025 🔗Explore details & submit: ic2s2-2025.org Stay tuned for exciting keynote announcements!

(6) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20…

(5) Thanks in particular to @yangguobin and an anonymous reviewer for thought-provoking comments, and for all panelists at @icahdq Gold Coast for an enlivening discussion. We really enjoyed thinking through this piece and writing it together. Would love to hear feedback!

(1) The Chinese internet has been vibrant for 30 years, but will it remain that way? In new issue of @CommPublicSAGE, @jenjpan and I explore “disengagement”: that surveillance, censorship, and disenchantment might lead Chinese citizens to disappear from the web (link at end).1/6