Dr. Lin Zhang

This month is the official pub date of The Labor of Reinvention. This is a book about China's state-led and tech entrepreneurship driven transformation since the late 2000s and how it has shaped new labor practices and experiences in rural, urban & transnational China. A thread👇

1/ I don’t think it’s right to say China's open source was never strategic from the top. In 1999, an academician named He Dequan argued China needed its own software for information security and that the rise of 'free software' was a strategic opening. web.archive.org/web/2007101200…

Join us for the 3-session Harvard workshop: "Technology & Society in/through Global China" 9:30 am - 3:30 pm, Mar 13, 2026, CGIS South, Harvard University 🍽 Lunch provided Topics: platforms, AI data work, digital labor, techno-economic governance. fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/technol…

Understanding Peasant China(3.5⭐️) Analytical Marxist investigating a series of historical disputes seeking to give a more firm footing to doing social science. It has a very good discussion of generalization and theories, what an explanation is and how empirical reasoning works.

Take action to honor Dr. Jane Ying Wu. AASF, FAPA & concerned faculty ask you to sign a letter expressing deep concern over the recent allegations in a complaint by the Estate of Dr. Jane Ying Wu. Sign on by Jan 29 at 12 pm ET: buff.ly/u656wy3

I will discuss this remarkable paper: China pulled off something economists long thought impossible. It went from pharma free rider to innovation leader. A single policy change (NRDL) massively expanded market size, cut prices, and increased frontier drug R&D.

Together, we ask: How can thinking and writing from/with Asia help us provincialize Silicon Valley and generate new concepts for understanding platform economies today? 🍷 Here's a full lineup of our 10 articles: journals.sagepub.com/topic/collecti…

From Japanese convenience stores to K-pop fandoms, from Chinese superapps to Indian short-video platforms, our contributors explore how Asia’s diverse experiences of platformization reshape global debates on labor, governance, and post-neoliberal futures.

I am very pleased to share our new Social Media + Society special issue co-edited with Jingyan Elaine Yuan. This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars to rethink both “platform” and “Asia” as dynamic, contested imaginaries—rather than fixed objects of analysis.

Such a pleasure working with you all to bring this piece into the world. Hope our conversations continue!

Heartfelt thanks to Yifan Cai, Gulinigaer Yishake, @SandeepMertia, @andretwp for their brilliant & generous engagements.

I’m thrilled to share my recently published book forum response in Dialogues in Urban Research, in response to a set of wonderful book reviews of The Labor of Reinvention. Details and links to articles here: linkedin.com/pulse/book-for…

A China e o Brasil mantêm uma cooperação agrícola altamente complementar e benéfica — uma das áreas mais dinâmicas da parceria bilateral. 🌾 Com uma participação de 79,9% nas exportações de soja do Brasil nos primeiros nove meses deste ano, a soja continua a ser pilar na troca . Só em setembro, a China comprou 6,5 milhões de toneladas da oleaginosa, respondendo por 93% do embarque mensal. A pauta agrícola se amplia: carne, celulose, milho, sorgo, café e DDGs ganham espaço, com acordos que também incluem carne de pato, de peru e farinha de amendoim. Na tecnologia agrícola, projetos como o Laboratório Conjunto China-Brasil de IA para Mecanização Agrícola Familiar já transformam a vida de pequenos produtores no Nordeste brasileiro. 🚜 Na sustentabilidade, a soja livre de desmatamento embarcada em 2024 marca um novo passo rumo a um futuro verde. 💚 leia mais: portuguese.cri.cn/2025/10/16/ART… #ChinaBrasil #Agro #Sustentabilidade #CooperaçãoAgrícola

Please join us tomorrow for our second guest of the 25-26 Black Studies Speaker Series @BrynMawrCollege with Dr. @ProfMcInnis on his field-shifting book Afterlives of the Plantation @ColumbiaUP

We hope this issue will inspire new conversations and directions in the field. Intro here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

In our intro, we revisit and reimagine Chinese communication studies via three analytical lenses: China in plural, Global China from above and below, & the digital platform as a contested infrastructural space.

Our special issue “Whither China? Chinese Communication Research at the New Conjuncture” has finally been published in @CJC_Journal tandfonline.com/toc/rcjc20/18/3

My piece in Asterisk this week:

[Reading Group IP week 3] This week, we discussed the 2024 article by R. Juhász, N. Lane, and D. Rodrik "The New Economics of Industrial Policy". They survey the literature and argue for a more nuanced opinion on government interventions 1/6

First day of termat Cambridge tomorrow. Here's an excellent book to inspire the teachers of the world for this academic year.