Professor You-tien Hsing

Research Areas

Interests

Political economy of development in East Asia (especially China), power and space, cultural and environmental politics, urbanization; regional focus: China

Contact Information

545 McCone Hall

yhsing@berkeley.edu

Office Hours

By appointment (arranged via email)

Biography

Professor and Pamela P. Fong Family Distinguished Chair in China Studies

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 and space. My first book, Making Captialism in China: The Taiwan Connection, focuses on the role of culture in inter-regional capital flows. In my second book, The Great Urban Tansformation: Politics of Land and Property in China, I examine the issue of territorality. I look at how the transformation of the state and the society shapes and is shaped by land battles in Chinese cities and villages. My co-edited book, Reclaiming Chinese Society, looks at China’s emerging social activism in the struggles over distribution, recognition, and representation. My current project concerns the cultural and environmental politics in Northwestern China. For my research I draw inspiration from ethnographical work: 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.

Education

1993, Ph.D., City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley

Selected Publications

2010. The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land & Property in China. New York: Oxford University Press.

2009. Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism, edited with Ching Kwan Lee. New York: Routledge Press.

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.

Courses

GEOG 164, Global China