Associate Professor of Political Science

Institutional Affiliation

University of Denver
Department of Political Science

Education

Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin Madison
M.A., Political Science, University of Wisconsin Madison
B.A., Journalism, Fudan University

Research Interests

Japanese politics; Chinese politics; East Asian international relations

Regional and Thematic Interests

East Asia
Government/Political Systems

Profile

Jing Sun, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Denver. His areas of expertise are Japanese politics, Chinese politics, and East Asian international relations. Dr. Sun, a native of Beijing, received his B.A. in journalism from Fudan University in Shanghai. Upon graduation, he worked as a journalist for Xinhua, China's state news agency, from 1997 to 1999. He also worked for China Central Television, the People's Daily, and Beijing Youth Daily while he was a student at the School of Journalism of Fudan University. Dr. Sun came to the United States in 1999. He has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation, and was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo from 2003 to 2004 and at Waseda University from 2008 to 2009, at Shanghai International Studies University in 2013, and at Jilin Univerity (China) in 2014. He is the author of Japan and China as Charm Rivals: Soft Power in Regional Diplomacy (University of Michigan Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in Current HistoryAsian SurveyAsia Policy, and the Diplomat, among others. Dr. Sun is a regular contributor to the People's Forum, one of China's leading current affairs magazines. He has received interviews from American, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian media outlets. Dr. Sun speaks English, Mandarin, and Japanese fluently.

Selected Publications

2013. “The German Puzzle – a Political Analysis of Chinese Popular Affection for Germany.” Fudan Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 6, no. 4: 1-26.

2013. “Charmless Offensive: the Fate of Soft Power in East Asia.” First in a series of “Soft Power Revisited,” in Current History: a Journal of Contemporary World Affairs 112, no. 755: 217-223.

2013. “The Journey Home – How to House Soft Power in Mainstream IR Scholarship.” Asia Policy 15, no. 1: 148-154.

2012. Japan and China as Charm Rivals: Soft Power in Regional Diplomacy. University of Michigan Press.