Home>RPG Students>Yiwei YANG

Yiwei YANG is a PhD candidate at the Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Researching the political economy of original creations (yuanchuang) through the lens of Chinese designer toys, Ms. Yang examines the social, cultural, and political complexities of originality, creativity, and value chain through long-term ethnography and cross-boundary fieldwork. Tracing the social bibliography and itinerary of toy bricks via design, manufacturing and distribution processes, Ms. YANG investigates the embedded inequalities and human consequences of statecraft, geopolitics, global capitalism, property regimes, platform algorithms, and industrial technologies.

Increasingly, what was earlier known to the world as copycats, Made-in-China products are now sold as “original creations” on major global platforms like Amazon.com. Starting from her dissertation project, Ms. Yang have embarked on her long-term research on the Chinese cross-border e-commerce (kuajing dianshang) industry to investigate how algorithmic governance of global platforms reshape Chinese industrial ecosystems, and how these changes push Chinese practitioners to build a transnational infrastructure of supply chains, logistics, warehouses, branding, and legal and tax services, which not only transcends the boundary of digital and physical worlds, but also expands beyond the dichotomy of Global North and South.

Throughout her academic career, Ms. YANG has exemplified a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research, exploring the disciplines of Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Science, Technology and Society (STS) Studies, with broad research interests in globalization, digital economy, platform governance, collective creations, artistic materiality and public-facing scholarship.