Hengfeng Zhao

Profile

My research broadly focuses on authoritarian and illiberal norms within non-Western contexts.

My doctoral thesis examines how member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation localise illiberal counter-terrorism, anti-extremism, and anti-separatism norms across discourse, legislation, and societal levels. It also investigates the factors that account for variations in these localisation approaches. In this thesis, I employ a set-theoretic multi- method approach, combining qualitative comparative analysis and (comparative) case studies.

Research interests

• Transitional order and non-Western middle powers. Why do states diverge in their responses when powerful actors break the rules, and what does that divergence tell us about the liberal international order? I treat reactions to norm contestation as an indicator of order transition, using fuzzy-set QCA to analyse 28 non-Western middle powers' responses to Russia's actions in Crimea and Ukraine and China's human rights practices in Xinjiang and Tibet. The analysis identifies four pathways to alignment or acquiescence, and finds that the human rights (sub)order is fragmenting while the sovereignty (sub)order holds discursively but erodes in practice. Published in Global Studies Quarterly (doi:10.1093/isagsq/ksaf116).
• Capitalism, exclusionary hierarchy, and the crisis of the liberal order. Most accounts read the crisis of the liberal international order as a maintenance failure. This co-authored work argues instead that the LIO managed capitalism's access to the conditions it treats as free, unpaid care, an extractable ecology, and public institutions, by marking whole populations as outside protection. Progressive neoliberalism naturalised that arrangement until its material foundations gave out. Western right-wing populism and China's ordering practices are not threats to the order but rival adaptations that extend its exclusionary logic, recasting protection in ethnonationalist form and reworking the global market through state capitalism respectively. Presented at the BISA Annual Conference (2026).
• Post-structuralist approaches to norm contestation. Norms are persistently contested yet appear stable. Rather than treating this as a paradox to be resolved, I read it through French post-structuralist philosopher Deleuze to reconceptualise norms as processes of becoming, held together by difference and desire rather than by consensus. The framework shifts the question from whether a norm is robust to how its apparent stability is produced. Presented at the European Workshops in International Studies (2025).
• Boundary work and China's role in global AI governance. How does China navigate international hierarchy in a governance field still under construction? I develop a praxeological framework that reconceptualises boundary work as classification struggle, synthesising Bourdieu's symbolic power with Hofius's account of situated negotiation, and generate a typology of four boundary-making strategies: status competitor, pluralist, aspirant, and universalist. Applied to China's AI governance engagement from 2017 to 2025, the analysis shows a calibrated repertoire that reproduces, challenges, and de-emphasises hierarchy depending on the arena, moving the debate beyond the revisionist/status quo binary. Presented at the EISA Early Career Workshop (2025).
• Comparative anti-extremism practice. Extending the typology of anti-extremism practices developed in my thesis, I lead a collaborative project comparing how anti-extremism is codified and enacted across Bangladesh, China, Nigeria, and Somalia, and asking what accounts for cross-national variation in the form these practices take. Presented at the BISA Annual Conference (2025).

Qualifications

• Joint Master's Degree, Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University