Biography:

Wen Xie is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of Chicago. Trained as an economic and comparative historical sociologist, she is broadly interested in political economic transformations in the twentieth century and more particularly interested in capitalist transformations of actually existing socialism. She is keen to know how common people’s life experiences amid rapid political economic transformations in the past century could help us understand our own identity formation, economic ethos, hope and aspirations in the new era. These research interests guide her scholarship as it intersects with social change, political economy, historical demography and development studies.  

Dissertation: The Making of the Chinese Rustbelt: Socialist Legacy, Market Transformation and Generational Experiences, 1950s-2010s

Her dissertation examines social change in Northeast China. She asks why, despite China’s miraculous economic growth, the formerly prosperous Northeast did not succeed in developing as robust a market economy as other regions in China. Instead, it became the first region to enter decline, and a political and economic culture arose that was prone to welfare dependency, corruption, an overly bureaucratized government, and reliance on personal ties (guanxi). Based on one year of multi-sited fieldwork in the region, she argues that Northeast China did not successfully develop a market culture because the baby boom generation in the region, whose life course was shaped by political movements, danwei employment, and market reforms of state sectors, fails to become professional bureaucrats or disciplined workers based on impersonal rules and remains reliant on personal ties to secure resources.