The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China
(forthcoming with Princeton University Press in fall 2023)
Coverage in New York Times: here.
I analyze the emergent post-industrial society in China, focusing on China’s techno-development from the mid-2000s to the present day. Noting the extraordinary transformation of China’s economy and society during this time, some scholars have compared China’s post-reform period to the Gilded Age in the United States. By contrast, I seek to highlight the darker implications of these changes, what I refer to collectively as China’s “gilded cage.” I use this term to capture not so much a literal space as the dynamic processes and relations set in motion by the Chinese state’s effort to move from an economy relying on labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing to what I call “techno-state capitalism”—a system characterized by the unprecedented rise of tech capital and an asymmetrically symbiotic relationship between tech capital and the state. The drive towards techno-state capitalism has included: (1) the proliferation of technological and legal instruments established by the state and large tech companies to regulate work and life, and enhance legibility, valuation, efficiency, and behavior modification; (2) the legal, economic, and cultural subordination of work, workers, and forms of capital deemed “obsolete” or “low-end” to those valorized as “high-tech” or “high-end,” despite China’s official socialist ideology; and (3) the intensified subjection of both “low-end” and “high-end” workers and capital to the precarious and despotic rule by instruments. In the book, I explain how this sweeping, lopsided, and unchecked rule by instruments came to be, and discuss the contradictions between the state and different kinds of capital and labor that have followed in its wake.
(forthcoming with Princeton University Press in fall 2023)
Coverage in New York Times: here.
I analyze the emergent post-industrial society in China, focusing on China’s techno-development from the mid-2000s to the present day. Noting the extraordinary transformation of China’s economy and society during this time, some scholars have compared China’s post-reform period to the Gilded Age in the United States. By contrast, I seek to highlight the darker implications of these changes, what I refer to collectively as China’s “gilded cage.” I use this term to capture not so much a literal space as the dynamic processes and relations set in motion by the Chinese state’s effort to move from an economy relying on labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing to what I call “techno-state capitalism”—a system characterized by the unprecedented rise of tech capital and an asymmetrically symbiotic relationship between tech capital and the state. The drive towards techno-state capitalism has included: (1) the proliferation of technological and legal instruments established by the state and large tech companies to regulate work and life, and enhance legibility, valuation, efficiency, and behavior modification; (2) the legal, economic, and cultural subordination of work, workers, and forms of capital deemed “obsolete” or “low-end” to those valorized as “high-tech” or “high-end,” despite China’s official socialist ideology; and (3) the intensified subjection of both “low-end” and “high-end” workers and capital to the precarious and despotic rule by instruments. In the book, I explain how this sweeping, lopsided, and unchecked rule by instruments came to be, and discuss the contradictions between the state and different kinds of capital and labor that have followed in its wake.
The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton University Press, 2018)
Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2018 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award, Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2014 American Sociological Association Best Dissertation Award
The Contentious Public Sphere in China shows how the Chinese state drew on law, marketized media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but ended up inadvertently creating a nationwide contentious public sphere in China—one the Chinese state must now endeavor to control.
Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China has become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? In The Contentious Public Sphere in China, Ya-Wen Lei shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. Lei examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded.
Using interviews, newspaper articles, online texts, official documents, and national surveys, Lei shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. She demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing one with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people. Investigating how individuals learn to use public discourse to influence politics, The Contentious Public Sphere in China offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state-society relations.
Winner of the 2018 Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2018 Gordon Hirabayashi Human Rights Book Award, Human Rights Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner of the 2014 American Sociological Association Best Dissertation Award
The Contentious Public Sphere in China shows how the Chinese state drew on law, marketized media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but ended up inadvertently creating a nationwide contentious public sphere in China—one the Chinese state must now endeavor to control.
Since the mid-2000s, public opinion and debate in China has become increasingly common and consequential, despite the ongoing censorship of speech and regulation of civil society. How did this happen? In The Contentious Public Sphere in China, Ya-Wen Lei shows how the Chinese state drew on law, the media, and the internet to further an authoritarian project of modernization, but in so doing, inadvertently created a nationwide public sphere in China—one the state must now endeavor to control. Lei examines the influence this unruly sphere has had on Chinese politics and the ways that the state has responded.
Using interviews, newspaper articles, online texts, official documents, and national surveys, Lei shows that the development of the public sphere in China has provided an unprecedented forum for citizens to influence the public agenda, demand accountability from the government, and organize around the concepts of law and rights. She demonstrates how citizens came to understand themselves as legal subjects, legal and media professionals began to collaborate in unexpected ways, and existing conditions of political and economic fragmentation created unintended opportunities for political critique, particularly with the rise of the internet. The emergence of this public sphere—and its uncertain future—is a pressing one with important implications for the political prospects of the Chinese people. Investigating how individuals learn to use public discourse to influence politics, The Contentious Public Sphere in China offers new possibilities for thinking about the transformation of state-society relations.
