Personal Profile

Why I do what I do?

I entered graduate school in the United States in 2014, a time when China increasingly attracted criticisms from the West for its expansionist pursuits after the introduction of the “Belt and Road Initiative”. In mainstream English media, this underdefined but grand-sounding phrase is often illustrated by photos displaying the conspicuous footprints left by Chinese capital across the Global South. For me, however, the juxtaposition exposes a clear gap in knowledge waiting to be filled. As the history of capitalism has long made clear, capital does not flow automatically, but is painstakingly moved from place to place. Vague state policies of China offer little explanation as to how capital has managed to depart the country en masse and reground itself over recent decades in unfamiliar peripheral destinations.
 
In 2016, I took this question to Laos, a country that experienced a deluge of Chinese capital only after the turn of the 2010s. Following the journeys of Chinese corporate managers, individual investors, and bureaucrats on aid missions, I encountered a vast underworld of commercial brokers who enabled them to conceive and set up operations in Laos. These intermediaries are primarily Chinese entrepreneurial migrants who ventured into Laos after 1990 and since became semi-settled. Clustered in cities like Vientiane that serve as a major gateway into Laos, these actors engage in aggressive campaigns to market Laos to Chinese as a land of untapped opportunities, extracting commissions by assisting clients to navigate formal procedures and patronage networks. They constitute a vibrant “Wall Street in Cottage,” providing business services that at once lubricate but also condition the global expansion of Chinese capital.

The diasporic brokers share an urgent concern for immediate profit maximisation, a pursuit that often leads to practices conventionally associated with scams and frauds. As such, their involvement contributes towards accelerating boom and bust in the making of Chinese capitalism in Laos. My research investigates the rationales underlying their relentless quest for quick fortune, even when many acknowledged that they had made enough and wanted a way out. I show how much this logic resides in their very state of being as suspended subjects who are trapped in between China and Laos, unable to settle on either side due to uneven development, institutional setup, and the nature of their business matters. It leads to a prolonged sense of insecurity and a desire to become self-sustained rather than fall back on the state for protections of any sort. Such mindsets drive Chinese entrepreneur migrants into ceaseless and frantic experimentation with transnational accumulation schemes. The spectrum of hustles in business service is only their latest venture, afforded by an era when Laos is being dramatically positioned as a popular destination for outbound Chinese capital by the vision sketched out in the Belt and Road Initiative.

I am in the process of writing up my findings from this long-term research project into a monograph, while also developing a few side projects on China’s booming livestreaming e-commerce and transnational lives disrupted during the Covid19 pandemic. In retrospect, my educational experience has been shaped by the Chinese norm of rushing through school all at once, in order to enter adult life marked by employment and marriage afterwards. As a result, I never took gap years to explore the world outside the ivory tower. This life trajectory turned me into a social scientist who is simply out of touch with society, who constantly projects theory into reality instead of taking reality as a reference point to evaluate theory. Troubled by the relevance of my knowledge production to the world beyond professional academics, I have decided to explore new ways of conducting research and writing that are capable of addressing common concerns of our time and inspiring progressive changes.  This soul-searching journey is what brought me to the Max Planck Institute and to the field of anthropology.
   
What should anthropology do?
 
I initially felt the charm of anthropology during a personal reading mission to understand China. Compared to other texts, anthropological works on this topic are much more relatable on a personal level. I often felt like I was reading my own life experience out of them. My favourite authors are those who can capture and articulate my struggles better than I do. They help me problematise my own state of being. This style of knowledge production is what anthropology should pursue in the future. It is down to earth and touches the soul, as it aims to communicate with people who feel lost in this world; people who wonder why they become who they are, people who are searching––with some difficulty––to place themselves in history.