Projects
Riding the Wave: Boosters, Brokers, and the Making of Belt and Road in Laos
My working monograph addresses how a brutalised diaspora shapes the ongoing flows of Chinese capital into Laos. Centred on a group of Chinese who arrived in and lingered on in Laos after China’s market reform in 1978, my research dissects how their migration resulted in or was initiated by their marginal status in contemporary Chinese society. Hitherto, they had understood their life projects of migration to be something of a failure in the historic context of China’s fast and furious domestic development that lasted until the late 2000s. When Chinese political economy entered an expansionist phase due to domestic accumulation bottle necks, however, and Laos emerged as an increasingly popular destination for outbound capital, these subjects felt a rare chance to regain status in Chinese society. My ethnography captures how this diaspora is galvanised by a brutal morality that prioritises economic gain at all costs, as they reposition themselves as commercial intermediaries profiting by orchestrating transnational Chinese capital flows. In these processes, they leave an indelible imprint on the contour and content of Chinese investments in Laos.
The Absurdity of Transnational Mobility Governance in Pandemic China
Since 2020, China’s long-lasting zero-covid policy has ushered in a series of stringent, complex, and constantly changing regulations on inbound mobility. As a result, over the past three years, travelling to China has become an experience marked by absurdity. An entanglement of flight irregularity, arrival quotas, and biometric screening makes the journey practically impossible for many, or at least a project that requires substantial investment of time and money in addition to sheer luck. This project examines China’s regulatory regime regarding transnational mobility governance during the pandemic, focusing on its absurd consequences for travellers. It seeks to analyse how the feeling of absurdity is managed and normalised by those experiencing it, exploring the shifting mental state of Chinese society under an increasingly authoritarian state.
Livestreaming E-commerce and the Platformatisation of Low-end Manufacturing Industry in China
This project examines how the proliferation of livestreaming e-commerce platforms is reconfiguring China’s low-end manufacturing industry by routing commodities to consumers. A changing technological base generates new possibilities, and my research investigates how this enables different stakeholders to build upon this transforming digital landscape in unexpected ways. The process of platformatisation is mediated and co-produced by a myriad of actors involved in the life trajectory of commodities, who scramble to secure advantageous positions for themselves in the emerging digital space. My research thus explores technological innovation’s rippling effects across production networks, in order to address how it redefines and redistributes power and profit.