Interests: My research and teaching has been focused on the political economy of development in East Asia, especially China. I am interested in the question of power in its various expressions and scales in the process of social, cultural, spatial and economic change. My first book, Making Capitalism in China: The Taiwan Connection, (1998) focused on the role of culture in capital flows. I analyzed the cultural and institutional configuration in the processes of Taiwanese direct investment in southern China in the 1980s-90s. In my forthcoming second book, temporarily entitled Rebuilding China: The Politics of Land Development, I deal with the issue of territoriality. I look at how the transformation of the state and the society shapes and is shaped by land issues in cities and villages; and how land and power together tell the story of territorial transformation in post Mao China. For my research I draw inspiration from life experiences of real people in real places; and I rely heavily on fieldwork-- in-depth interviews and participatory observation with a reflexive perspective. I believe that theorizing starts from muddy realities. It is a process of open dialogues and self-reflections, of which the historical and the geographical, the institutional and the emotional are all indispensable parts.

Recent publications include:
2006. Brokering Power and Property in China's Townships, Journal of Pacific Review, Vol.19, No. 1. pp.103-124.

2006. Land and Territorial Politics in Urban China, The China Quarterly, No. 187, September 2006.

2006. Power and property relations in Chinese towns, in Lei Guang ed., Rural China in Transition, Overseas Young Chinese Forum Conference Collection.

2006. "Global capital and local land in China's urban real estate development", in Wu, Fulong ed., Globalization and Chinese Cities. NY: Routledge. pp. 167-189.

2003. Ethnic identity and business solidarity: Chinese capitalism revisited, in L. Ma and C. Cartier eds., The Chinese Diaspora; Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. pp.221-236.

1999. Trading companies in Taiwan's fashion shoe networks," Journal of International Economics, 48:101-120.

1998. Making Capitalism in China: The Taiwan Connection. New York: Oxford University Press.

1996. "Blood, thicker than water: Interpersonal relations and Taiwanese investment in Southern China," Environment and Planning A, Vol. 28,pp. 2241-2261.