Wei Cui

Professor Wei Cui joined the law faculty at the University of British Columbia in 2013. His research and writing span a wide range of topics in tax law and policy, including international taxation, tax administration and compliance, tax and development, the value added tax, and tax and spending policies targeted at the labor market. His current research projects examine the design of international taxation in light of the evolution of international trade, and compare redistributive policies in democratic v. authoritarian countries. Wei also has secondary research interests in the modern administrative state, especially the analysis of interactions among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government in parliamentary polities and in non-democratic regimes.

Wei’s most recent book, The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State (Cambridge University Press 2022), offers a systematic study of Chinese taxation that explains the lessons China’s successful revenue-raising effort holds for developing countries, the reasons why mainstream economic theories must be revised to recognize fundamentally different types of state capacity, and the challenging questions the Chinese paradigm raises for the future of taxation.

Wei’s scholarship, which often engages with new discoveries of economists and political scientists, has been supported by two recent Insight Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanity Research Council of Canada.

Before becoming a full-time academic, Wei practiced tax law for over 10 years in New York and Beijing. During 2009-2010, he was Senior Tax Counsel at the China Investment Corporation. He has also served as a consultant to China’s National People’s Congress, Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation, as well as to the United Nations.