John James Kennedy is Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Kansas. He has consistently returned to China to conduct research on rural politics since 1994, and he is also co-founder of the Northwest Socioeconomic Development Research Center (NSDRC) at Shaanxi Normal University, Xian, China. His research is on local governance and social development in China; topics include local elections, family planning, health care and the cadre management system. He (with Shi Yaojiang) published Lost and Found: the ‘Missing Girls’ in Rural China (Oxford University Press) in 2019. He has also published in a variety of peer reviewed journals including The China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Asian Survey, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Political Studies, Asian Politics and Policy and the Journal of Chinese Political Science.