Time: 10:30 am to 12:00 pm, Friday, May 3

Venue: IB 2026

Speaker: Zhihao Xu, Assistant Professor at Institute of Economics at School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University

Host: Peiyuan Li, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Duke Kunshan University

Speaker’s bio: Zhihao Xu is an Assistant Professor at Institute of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University. His academic interests span Economic History and Macroeconomics, with a particular emphasis on the price system and inflation during the Republic of China era (1911-1949), as well as the intersection of economics and warfare. He earned his PhD in Economics from UCLA in 2021.

Abstract: Defections in wars are extreme forms of loyalty changes. What makes military officers betray their motherland to serve the invaders? Using a novel data set of career paths of over 2,800 high-ranked (colonels and generals) Nationalist (KMT) military officers in the Second Sino-Japanese War (as part of World War II), we examine defection cases to the Japanese puppet regimes. Three findings emerge. First, the high-ranked KMTofficers who were slower in career advancement– either in individual promotions or compared with peers– were more likely to defect, thus a Push Effect. Second, Chiang Kai-shek’s mainstream Whampoa Military Academy graduates were less likely to defect, anticipating better career prospects. Third, high-ranked officers receiving military education in Japan–those prone to have more positive impressions and higher expectations of favorable treatment– were more likely to defect, thus a Pull Effect. This paper highlights the co-existence of internal and external motivations for loyalty transformation.