Ching Kwan Lee
Biography
I am a sociologist interested in global and comparative issues: labor, political sociology, global development, decolonization, comparative ethnography, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Africa and the global south.
I have published three multiple award-winning monographs on contemporary China, forming a trilogy of Chinese capitalism through the lens of labor politics. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (California 1998) documents the organization of gender and work in factory regimes in Hong Kong and Shenzhen when South China first emerged as the workshop of the world. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (California 2007) chronicles the unmaking and making of the Chinese working class in two regional economies experiencing the death of socialism and the rise of capitalism respectively in one country. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago 2017) follows the footsteps of Chinese state capital to Zambia and compares its relation with African state and labor to global private capital.
My most recent publications turn to resistance to global China, especially mass mobilizations in Hong Kong. They include a monograph on Hong Kong’s decolonization struggle against both British and Chinese colonialism, titled Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle (Harvard, 2025), a short format book titled Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier (Cambridge 2022), and a co-edited volume on the 2014 Umbrella Movement: Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (Cornell, 2019).
My research on the global south can be found in a co-authored book Southern Interregnum: Remaking Hegemony in Brazil, India, China and South Africa (Manchester, 2025) and a co-edited volume The Social Question in the Twenty-first Century: A Global View (California, 2019)
I am the series editor of Cambridge Elements in Global China, and a convener of the Global Hong Kong Studies @UC initiative.
Publications
Books
1. Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle. Harvard University Press, 2025
2. Southern Interregnum: Remaking Hegemony in Brazil, India, China and South Africa. Manchester University Press, 2025 (co-authored with Alf Nilsen, Karl von Holdt, Ruy Braga, Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos)
3. Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
4. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa. U of Chicago Press, 2017. (Joseph Levenson Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies, 2019; Alice Amsden Book Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, 2019; Africa-Asia Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars, 2018; Asia and Transnational Book Award, Asia and Asian American Section, American Sociological Association, 2018; Best Book Award, Labor and Labor Movement Section, ASA; 2018; Best Book Award, Development of Sociology Section co-winner, 2018; Distinguished Book Award, Political Economy and World System Section, ASA, Honorable Mention 2018; Distinguished Book Award, Global and Transnational Sociology Section, ASA, Honorable Mention 2018; )
5. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (UC Press, 2007) (Sociology of Labor Book Award 2008, American Sociological Association)
6. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (UC Press 1998) : (American Sociological Association, Asia and Asian American Section Best Book Award 2000; Best Book Award, Labor Section of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1999)
7. Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: Politics and Poetics of Collective Memory in Reform China (Stanford U Press, 2007, edited with Guobin Yang):
8. Working in China: Ethnographies of Labor and Workplace Transformation (Routledge 2007, edited)
9. Reclaiming Chinese Society: the New Social Activism. London: Routledge (Co-edited with You-tien Hsing, 2009)
10. From Iron Rice Bowls to Informalization: Markets, State and Workers in a Changing China. Cornell University Press (Co-edited with Sarosh Kuruvilla and Mary Gallagher, 2011)
11.Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (Cornell, 2019; coedited with Ming Sing)
12.The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View (California 2019; coedited with Jan Breman, Kevan Harris and Marcel van der Linden)
Articles
“Global China at 20: Why, How and So What?” The China Quarterly 250: 313-331, 2022.
“The Specter of Global China” New Left Review no. 89, Sept-Oct 2014, pp.29-65.
“State and Social Protest in China” Daedalus 143(2), Spring 2014, pp. 124-134.
“Engendering the Worlds of Labor: Women Workers, Labor Markets and Production Politics in the South China Economic Miracle,” American Sociological Review vol. 60(3): 378-397, 1995
Awards & Grants
Awards
2024 Distinguished Career in Political Sociology Award, Political Sociology Section, American Sociological Association
2019 Alice Amsden Book Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (for The Specter of Global China)
2019 Joseph Levenson Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Asia and Transnational Book Award, Asia and Asian American Section, American Sociological Association (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Best Book Award, Labor and Labor Movement Section, American Sociological Association (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Best Book Award, Sociology of Development Section American Sociological Association (co-winner, for The Specter of Global China)
2019 Outstanding Scholarly Book, Global Division, Society for the Study of Social Problems, for The Specter of Global China
2018 Africa-Asia Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Distinguished Book Award, Political Economy and World System Section, American Sociological Association, Honorable Mention (for The Specter of Global China)
2018 Distinguished Book Award, Global and Transnational Sociology Section, American Sociological Association, Honorable Mention (for The Specter of Global China)
National Science Foundation Grant 2018-2021 (Work Under Platform Capitalism)
Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 2013-14
National Science Foundation Grant, 2010-2013
2008 Sociology of Labor Book Award, American Sociological Association, Labor and Labor Movement Section (for Against the Law)
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Member, 2006-7
Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Fellow 2003-4
Best Book Award, American Sociological Association, Asia and Asian American Section, 1999 (for Gender and the South China Miracle)
