About the NTU-Kim Koo Professor

/in , , ,

Professor Ching Kwan LEE is a sociologist in the Sociology Department at UCLA. She is also the series editor of Cambridge Elements in Global China, and a convener of the Global Hong Kong Studies @UC initiative. Her research interests include global and comparative issues such as labor, political sociology, global development, decolonization, comparative ethnography, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Africa.

Professor Lee published several award-winning books, exploring capitalism in the contemporary China. For instance, Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (California, 1998) examines the structuring of gender and labor in factory settings in Hong Kong and Shenzhen during South China’s rise as a global manufacturing hub. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (California, 2007) narrates the reformation of the Chinese working class across two regional economies, highlighting the concurrent decline of socialism and the rise of capitalism within the nation. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago, 2017) traces the activities of Chinese state investors in Zambia, contrasting their interactions with African state and labor entities against those of other international private investors.
Professor  Lee’s recent publications focus on the current situation in Hong Kong, including Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier (Cambridge, 2022) and an ongoing monograph, Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Struggle for Decolonization (Harvard, under contract).