Please join the Statistical Computing Workshop as they host Qin Huang, Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the Computational Social Science Program at the University of Rhode Island, for a presentation titled, "Computational Typology: Classifying Regional Economies in China"
Abstract
China's regional economies are deeply diverse, yet existing approaches struggle to classify them into stable and interpretable types. This talk introduces computational typology—a framework chaining clustering, dimensionality reduction, and stability testing—and applies it to 31 provinces across 23 macroeconomic variables over 23 years. The analysis reveals four stable types of regional economies organized along two dimensions: state direct participation and market institutional development. The talk concludes by demonstrating the methodological framework's portability to broader themes in comparative politics, including varieties of capitalism, welfare states, and authoritarian regimes.
Bio
Qin Huang is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the Computational Social Science Program at the University of Rhode Island. His research focuses on comparative political economy, institutional change, and bureaucratic politics. Methodologically, he explores how generative AI and machine-learning techniques can complement qualitative and inductive research. He is currently working on a book project, Patchwork Capitalism, which examines the varieties of regional economies in China, their historical evolution, and China’s integration into global capitalism.