Tongyu Wu is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Zhejiang University. Her research lies at the intersection of labor, information technology, gender, and global development.She is currently pursuing two interrelated lines of research. The first examines how technological change, capital, and the state interact to reshape the future of work, with a particular focus on the AI industry and AI data annotation work. Her related research has appeared in journals such as New Media and Society and Bi

Yan Xu is Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. His research interests are comparative and international political economy, with focuses on China, technology, global supply chains, and state-business relations. His research has appeared in Politics Society and Socio-Economic Review. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for Inte

Marion Fourcade is Professor of Sociology and Director of Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley. A leading comparative sociologist, her research examines economic sociology, valuation, knowledge, politics, and the social consequences of digital classification. She is the author of Economists and Societies and, with Kieran Healy, The Ordinal Society (2024), which explores new forms of stratification shaped by behavioral data and digital environments. Her work has receive

Wei Chenis an Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 2016. Her research focuses on the political economy of technological innovation, the developmental state and industrial policy, state governance, and state-business relations in China. Her work has been published in The China Journal,The China Review, andJournal of Contemporary China and

Rongbin Han is Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. His research interests cover digital politics, political participation, popular contention, and state-society relations in authoritarian settings, with an area focus on China. He is the author ofContesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience(Columbia University Press, 2018) a ndMake China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism(Columbia University Press, 20

Dr. Yujia He is an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, University of Kentucky. Her research interests span science and technology policy, international political economy, development studies, and Asian studies. Her current and past projects study Chinese tech firms’ overseas expansion, smart city development and international partnerships, digital trade and data governance, AI’s impact on labor, the geopolitical economy of technology development

Dr. Jingyang Huang is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Social Science from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Before joining CUHK (Shenzhen), Dr. Huang gained professional experience as an RGC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Social Science at HKUST (2022-2023), followed by a role as Research Assistant Professor at the same institution (2023-2025). His research inte

Dr. Muyang Li is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at York University, with research interests spanning digitalization, public sphere, authoritarianism, and gender. Her scholarship is grounded in a central question: how does digitalization interact with power and knowledge production? Through this lens, she examines how artificial intelligence and social automation reshape politics, platforms, publics, and the press.Using mixed methods, she studies how states and publics negotiate the social m

Le Lin is Associate Professo r of Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hisresearch centers on education, organizations, economic sociology, transnational sociology a nd Chinese society. His first book,The Fruits of Oppo rtunism: Noncompliance a nd the Evolution of China’s Supplemental Education Industry, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022. This book won the Hono rable Mention of the Best Book Award on Asia/Transnational by the American Sociological Association i

Thomas Cao is Assistant Professor of Technology Policy at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. An interdisciplinary political economist, his research examines technology policy, economic governance, and the political implications of digital and technological transformation. His recent public work has focused on issues such as disinformation, Chinese technology, and the broader relationship between technology and political economy.

Lizhi Liu is an Assistant Professor at the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on political economy and emerging markets. Her work has been published in leading journals and academic presses, including American Economic Review: Insights and Princeton University Press. Notably, her research on China’s e-commerce market has earned several prestigious awards and grants. These include the Silver Medal in

Yan Long is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and incoming Co-Director of Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies. She is a political sociologist whose research examines how globalization and China co-constitute one another, with a focus on public health, urban governance, international organizations, gender, and technology. Her current book project investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic, in tandem with rapidly expanding digital tools, has transformed China

Bai Gao is Professor of Sociology at Duke University. His research lies at the intersection of political economy, globalization, and Chinese society, with a particular focus on state industrial policy, technological transformation, and international political economy. His current work examines the rise of the electric vehicle industry in China and explores how large-scale historical shifts, including the changing balance between market forces and social protection, hegemonic transitions, and adv

Armando Lara-Millán is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. A political economic sociologist, he studies changing markets and their enabling institutions with particular attention to history, knowledge, power, and organizational life. His work has been especially influential in the study of public hospitals, jails, law, and fiscal austerity, and his book Redistributing the Poor received the American Sociological Association’s 2022 Distinguished Scholarly

Fengming Lu is a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in theDepartment of Political and Social Change,Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairsat the Australian National University. His research interests include a wide array of topics in comparative politics and Chinese politics, particularly the political economy of China, elite politics, and political selection. As a close observer of the Chinese automotive industry for 30 years, Fengming is working on a research project about politic

Jeff Lockhart is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research explores the social and political dimensions of science and technology, with particular attention to the contested boundaries of gender and sexuality. Combining computational social science with archival, qualitative, and technographic approaches, his work examines how technical systems shape knowledge, classification, and social difference.

Xiaobo Lü is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research examines fiscal policy, party-building, and state-society relations in authoritarian regimes, with a particular focus on China. More broadly, his work explores the formation and functioning of political parties and institutions in both historical and contemporary authoritarian contexts.

Lea Schneidemesser is a researcher in the department “Sociology of Digital Transformation and Work” at the Institute of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and an associate researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute and the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB). She works on topics related to economic, labor, and industrial sociology, as well as the political economy of innovation and technology, with a regional focus on Germany and China. Her research focuses on the internatio

Kellee S. Tsai is Dean of the College of Social Sciences a nd Humanities a nd Distinguished Professo r of Political Science at No rtheastern University. She previously served as Dean of Humanities a nd Social Science a nd Chair Professo r of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science a nd Technology (HKUST); a nd Vice Dean of Humanities a nd Social Science at Johns Hopkins University). Specializing in China’s political economy, info rmal institutions, a nd autho ritarian capitalism, her