Situated at a complex intersection where economic imperatives, socio-cultural transformations, and geopolitical shifts converge, technological trajectories within the orbit of “global China” have emerged as a pivotal force reconfiguring domestic fabrics and the international order. To navigate this complexity, the workshop transcends traditional disciplinary silos. We foster an interdisciplinary dialogue by bringing macro-level political economy into conversation with human-centered inquiries from the humanities and social sciences. By bridging disparate methodologies—from ethnographic and archival work to data-driven analysis—the workshop prompts a necessary rethinking of knowledge production in an era of technological transformation. We invite scholars at all career stages to collaboratively examine the socio-technical landscapes of ‘Global China’ as a critical, contested, and fundamentally interdisciplinary focal point of inquiry. The workshop features three synergistic open sessions: a forum on Critical Reflections on Studying Technology, a research seminar on Comparative Insights into Techno-economic Governance, and a panel on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Digital Platforms. Together, we aim to generate new visions and critical reflections on the social life of technology in and through a transforming global China.

Workshop Schedule

9:30 – 10:45 AM
Forum: Critical Reflections on Studying Technology
Participants:
Susan Greenhalgh, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Ya-Wen Lei, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Meg Rithmire, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, Harvard Business School
Moira Weigel, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

10:45 – 11:05 AM
Refreshment Break

11:05 AM – 12:35 PM
Seminar: Comparative Insights into Techno-Economic Governance

Participants:
Jack Linzhou Xing
An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Fairbank Center
Riding with the State: Didi and the Precarious Symbiosis between State and Platforms in China
Yolanda Yuxing Zhang
An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Fairbank Center
Platform Supply Chains and New Human Conditions in China

Discussants:
Ya-Wen Lei
Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Moira Weigel
Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University

12:35 – 2:00 PM
Lunch provided

2:00 – 3:30 PM
Panel: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Digital Platforms
Participants:
Julie Yujie Chen
Associate Professor, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) and Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Theorizing Digital Employment Configuration of AI Data Work
Joshua Neves
Associate Professor of Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University
On Ubiquity: Form and Platform in Lu Yang’s Doku Series
Marc Steinberg
Professor, Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University
Asian Platform Capitalisms
Lin Zhang
Associate Professor, Communication and Media Studies, University of New Hampshire
The Data Fix: Digital Agriculture and the Sociotechnical Politics of Datafication and
Assetization

Participant Biographies

Susan Greenhalgh
Greenhalgh’s work seeks to understand the emergence of new forms of scientific governance in the context of rapid shifts in global and local political economies. Her research has focused on three fields of bodily governance in the Chinese and the U.S. society: the management of populations, clinical biomedicine, and global health. Greenhalgh’s research also focuses on Chinese projects of social modernity – state efforts to transform China’s “backward masses” into the modern workers and citizens needed to make China a prosperous, globally prominent nation. Her influential works include but are not limited to Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China (2008), Fat-talk Nation: The Human Costs of America’s War on Fat (2015), Can Science and Technology Save China? (co-edited with Li Zhang, 2020), Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (2024).

Ya-wen Lei
Ya-wen Lei’s research examines political and socioeconomic transformation, with a particular focus on the relationship between technology, society, and political economy. She is the author of two books: The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China (Princeton University Press, 2018) and The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China (Princeton University Press, 2023). Her work has appeared in leading sociological journals, including the Annual Review of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and American Journal of Sociology. Her publications have received extensive recognition from the American Sociological Association, the Law and Society Association, the
Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and The China Quarterly.

Meg Rithmire
Meg Rithmire is the James E. Robison Professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her work also focuses on China’s role in the world, including Chinese outward investment and lending practices and economic relations between China and other countries, especially the United States. A new project on business geopolitical risk and resilience, for which she is co-chairing an initiative with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, focuses on how firms can and should change their governance practices to deal with geopolitical and especially national security risk.

Moira Weigel
Moira Weigel writes and teaches about the history, theory, and social life of media and communication technologies, from the early 19th century to the present. Her first book, Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (2016, Macmillan) shows that modern courtship practices have consistently coevolved with consumer capitalism and gendered work. Her second book (co-edited with Ben Tarnoff), Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (2020, FSG Originals), is a series of long-form anonymous interviews with workers at every level of
the Bay Area tech industry. Her current research focuses on transnational online marketplaces, arguing that despite tech competition, cross-border e-commerce has made ordinary people in China and the U.S. ever more closely entangled.

Jack Linzhou Xing
Jack Linzhou Xing holds a Ph.D. in History and Sociology of Technology and Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is interested in the social implications and governance of the 4 platform economy, digital infrastructure, and digital labor, with a regional focus on China. At the
Fairbank Center, he will be working on the contested development and deployment of autonomous vehicles in China.

Yolanda Yuxing Zhang
Yolanda Yuxing Zhang holds a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of Toronto. She is interested in how platforms bridge various markets and how value is translated across the interfaces of the economy, the sustainable development sphere, and innovation culture. At the Fairbank Center, Zhang plans to extend her doctoral research to examine the role of platforms, as both a design logic and a structuring system, in industrial upgrading.

Julie Yujie Chen
Julie Yujie Chen is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology (ICCIT) and Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research examines the transformation of work and workers’ subjectivity in relation to digital technology, capitalism, and globalization. She is the co-author of Media and Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and Super-sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Emerald, 2018). She is a member of the Capacitor Collective writing Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry (Common Notions, 2025). Chen is also the founding editor of Platforms & Society and the co-editor of the SAGE Handbook of Digital Labour (Sage, 2026). Currently, she is writing a book on Chinese data workers in the AI industry.

Joshua Neves
Joshua Neves is Associate Professor of Film and Moving Image Studies and Director of the Global Emergent Media (GEM) Lab at Concordia University. He is co-author (with Aleena Chia, Susanna Paasonen, and Ravi Sundaram) of Technopharmacology (Minnesota University Press / Meson Press, 2022), author of Underglobalization: Beijing’s Media Urbanism and the Chimera of Legitimacy (Duke University Press, 2020), co-editor (w/ Marc Steinberg) of In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround (Institute of Network Cultures, 2024) and co-editor (w/ Bhaskar Sarkar) of Asian Video Cultures: In the Penumbra of the Global (Duke University Press, 2017).

Marc Steinberg
Marc Steinberg researches the impacts of digital platforms on management practices, media industries, and cultural life in East Asia. He is the author of Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), The Platform Economy: How Japan Transformed the Commercial Internet (2019), and Media and Management (2021), among other books, and has coedited Media Theory in Japan (Duke University Press, 2017) and In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround (Institute of Network Cultures, 2024). He is currently completing The Convenience Story, a book about the Japanese convenience store and the platformization of convenience.

Lin Zhang
Zhang’s research encompasses a critical examination of technology, innovation, labor, and governance through a global lens. She place particular emphasis on issues of social justice and intersectionality, exploring various sectors including digital platforms, biomedicine and medtech, new agriculture, and the broader landscape of knowledge and cultural economy. Her primary geographical focus lies on China and the experiences of ethnic Asian communities within a global and comparative context. Zhang is the author of The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy (2023, Columbia University Press), one of the first multi-sited ethnographic 5 accounts of the rising entrepreneurial labor in urban, rural, and transnational China since tech innovation had accelerated in the country after 2008.