Minqi Chai is a PhD candidate in the government department at Cornell University. Her broad research interests are backlash politics and anti-globalization.

Minqi's disseration examines Australia's responses to China's growing economic influence with a comparison with the backlash against Japanese investment in the 1980s/1990s and US investment in the 1960s/1970s. Through a mixed method of text analysis, interviews and archival research, Minqi will study how economic ideas, political alignment and discourse strategies of politicians interact and affect policy responses to economic globalization.