About

Huaiyin Li is the Karen and Patrick Walker Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts. His academic expertise encompasses modern Chinese history, the contemporary Chinese economy, society, and politics, as well as imperial China. His research interests also include gender and family, agrarian studies, Chinese culture and religions, and comparative studies of development and globalization. As a distinguished scholar, Huaiyin Li contributes to the understanding of China's historical and social transformations, engaging with a broad range of topics that explore the complexities of Chinese development and cultural dynamics.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• History
• Ancient history
• Archaeology
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Political economy
• Linguistics
• Aesthetics
• Economic history
• Art

Selected publications

• Embedded Generations: Family Life and Social Change in Contemporary China. By Liu Jieyu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025. 288 pp. $99.95 (cloth), $29.95 (paper)

  Journal of Chinese History · 2026-04-07

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• From Unitary Plurality to Plural Unity

  The Journal of Asian Studies · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Ancient history

  Abstract The writings by Chinese historians and archeologists about the origins of Chinese civilization in the past century have transitioned from the old construct of “unitary plurality,” or a shared assumption of the mythical Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) as the progenitor of the only civilization in the land of Huaxia (proto China) while admitting its coexistence with other heterogeneous but inferior cultures, to the new paradigm of “plural unity” or a consensus on Huaxia's interaction with all other cultures to form a unitary Chinese civilization that has lasted into the twenty-first century. Substantiated by the archeological findings of the twentieth century, this transition was ultimately propelled by three interweaving forces, namely, Chinese researchers' ideological undertakings, their factional struggle for academic supremacy, and commitment to local interest and identity.

  PublisherDOI

• Index

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2023-03-16

  paratext1st authorCorresponding
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• :<i>Tiger, Tyrant, Bandit, Businessman: Echoes of Counterrevolution from New China</i>

  The China Journal · 2023-07-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• 1. The Making of the Masters: Disciplining Workers through Identity Building

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2023-03-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• 5. The Frustrated Masters: Workers before and during the Cultural Revolution

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2023-03-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• The Master in Bondage

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2023 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Drawing on a rich set of original oral histories conducted with retired factory workers from industrial centers across the country, this book provides a bottom-up examination of working class participation in factory life during socialist and reform-era China. Huaiyin Li offers a series of new interpretations that challenge, revise, and enrich the existing scholarship on factory politics and worker performance during the Maoist years, including the nature of the Maoist state as seen in the operation of power relations on the shop floor, as well as the origins and dynamics of industrial enterprise reforms in the post-Mao era. In sharp contrast with the ideologically driven goal of promoting grassroots democracy or manifesting workers' status as the masters of the workplace, Li argues that Maoist era state-owned enterprises operated effectively to turn factory workers into a well-disciplined labor force through a complex set of formal and informal institutions that functioned to generate an equilibrium in power relations and work norms. The enterprise reforms of the 1980s and 1990s undermined this preexisting equilibrium, catalyzing the transformation of the industrial workforce from predominantly privileged workers in state owned enterprises to precarious migrant workers of rural origins hired by private firms. Ultimately, this comprehensive and textured history provides an analytically astute new picture of everyday factory life in the world's largest manufacturing powerhouse.

  PublisherDOI

• 3. E veryday Power Relations in State Firms

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2023-03-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• :<i>Hongtaiyang de zhuore guanghui: Mao Zedong yu Zhongguo wuling niandai zhengzhi</i>

  The China Journal · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 2. Beyond Masterhood and Democracy: Worker Participation in Factory Governance

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2023-03-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Philip Huang

  4 shared

• Lian Jiajia

  4 shared

• Dajun Li

  East China University of Technology

  4 shared

• Jieying Zhang

  4 shared

• Yu Shengfeng

  Sun Yat-sen University

  4 shared

• Li Qingsu

  Sun Yat-sen University

  4 shared

• Geng Fuzhong

  Sun Yat-sen University

  4 shared

• Chen Chuan-bo

  Bridge University

  4 shared