Speaker
Prof. Yingyao Wang
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, The University of Virginia
Yingyao Wang is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a Residential Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University (2026-2027). Her research interests include state-market relations, development, and globalization. She has published on taxation, industrial policy, and financial market development in China in journals such as Socio-Economic Review, Review of International Political Economy, British Journal of Sociology, and Development and Change.
Her book, “Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats Make Policies and Remake the Chinese State”, received the Sociology of Development Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association in 2025. She is currently working on projects examining China’s outward foreign direct investment and how China studies other parts of the world.
Event Details
This talk attempts to offers a fresh account of China’s economic reforms over the past four decades, highlighting the pivotal role of mid-level bureaucrats in shaping the country’s developmental trajectory and global ambitions. Challenging the conventional view that China’s reforms merely “crossed the river by feeling for stones,” the book argues that paradigm-level shifts in economic policymaking generated the very currents that guided reform and reshaped visions of China’s future. This talk examines the formation and transformation of China’s economic policy paradigms and sociologically uncovers how policy initiatives emerge from the social logic of bureaucratic entrepreneurship, generational shifts, and network-based coalitions within the Chinese state.
Enquires
aidenchiu17@cuhk.edu.hk
