"You certainly wouldn't want to look at Twitter or Weibo exclusively as a measure of public opinion in any context because you often have the same people going to it," she says.

"I can't always get my mind around social media. When my students wake up in the morning they go to their Facebook page. It is the very fiber of their existence. I just want a cup of coffee."

She says one of the remarkable aspects of the Communist Party of China is how it has been able to adapt and survive while other systems have not, in particular, in the former Soviet Union.

"The Chinese Communist Party is a Leninist political party and remains to this day in some ways devoted to the practices that Lenin described as democratic centralism and mass mobilization.

"However, rather than assume the Party is a fixed or stable model I am more interested in how it has been able to adapt and innovate. Since I began my research on Chinese politics, I have found that fascinating."

Bio

Dr Patricia M. Thornton,Lecturer in the Politics of China, Oxford University

Education:

1985: BA in political science, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania;

1990: MA in political science, University of Washington, Seattle;

1997: PhD in political science, University of California, Berkeley.

Career:

1994-95: Visiting scholar at both the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei;

1996-97: Guest lecturer in political science, University of Alaska, Southeast (Juneau);

1998-2006: Assistant and then associate professor, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut;

2006-08: Associate professor, international studies program, Portland State University;

University lecturer in the Politics of China, Contemporary China Studies Programme and tutorial fellow, Merton College, Oxford University.

Book: The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi

Film: Shower (Xizao) (1999, directed by Zhang Yang)

Music: Cello Concerto in C Minor by Johann Christian Bach

Food: shuizhu niurou, Sichuan-style boiled beef that "will set your socks on fire."