Ching Kwan Lee

Ching Kwan Lee is a professor of sociology whose work focuses on globalization and the development of the global South, with a focus on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

She has published three monographs on China, forming a trilogy of Chinese capitalism through the lens of labor and working class experiences. “Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women” (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” (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. “The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa” (2017) examines Chinese state investors in Zambia and compares their relation with the African state and labor to other global private investors.

Her most recent co-edited volumes are “Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement “(2019) and “The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View” (2019).

Email: cklee@soc.ucla.edu