Book Talk: The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China

In this presentation, based on the book "The Gilded Cage," Ya-Wen Lei discussed how the Chinese developmental state orchestrated the transition to becoming the world's second-largest digital economy. This shift occurred against the backdrop of moving away from a labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing model. She explored the rise and nature of China's techno-developmental regime, its implications for state-capital-labor relations, and its varied impacts on different social groups.

 

 

Ya-Wen Lei is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. She is also affiliated with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. Trained in both law and sociology, she holds a LL.M. and a J.S.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan. After graduating from Michigan in 2013, she was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 2013 to 2016.

She is the author of 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). She has published in various journals, including Annual Review of Sociology, American Sociological Review, and American Journal of Sociology, Law and Society Review, Work, Employment and Society, Political Communication, and The China Quarterly. Her publications have received various awards from the American Sociological Association, the Law and Society Association, and The China Quarterly.