Dr. KuoRay Mao is the recipient of an American Region Scholar Grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, the most prominent and prestigious grant-giving foundation among scholars who study social issues in the greater China region.

KuoRay’s sabbatical research project, “Environmental Social Control & Regulatory Pluralism: A Green Criminology Approach to the Generation and Transference of Hazardous Wastes in Taiwan,” will remedy a gap in environmental governance research in Taiwan by examining how increases in recent foreign and return capital investment have shaped the formulation and implementation of hazardous wastes regulations and resources management laws. Utilizing green criminology and environmental sociology perspectives, KuoRay’s comparative and historical analysis will examine how national and local environmental NGOs have contested environmental regulatory failures and how the Taiwanese state, conglomerates, and civil society respond to the domestic and global environmental governance challenges amplified by Sino-U.S. geopolitical tensions.

KuoRay will also be working on his book manuscript that dissects the complex dynamics between the knowledge/power nexus of the environmental state and the criminal selectivity within authoritarian environmentalism in China and demonstrates how environmental governance can become a form of intensive social control and surveillance. His two research projects will lead to future comparative studies on how environmental governance models in Taiwan and China attempt to regulate the despoliation of natural environs within and outside of their borders as well as research on the social and ecological externalities caused by the expansion of Taiwan and Chinese capital in Southeast Asia and beyond.

The Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation funds scholars at academic institutions globally to undertake research projects in the humanities and social sciences that can shed new light on Chinese culture and society, as well as engage in international cooperation and exchange. This year’s awardee list can be found here.

Congratulations, KuoRay!