Journal of China in Global and Comparative Perspectives

About the author

Yanjie Bian is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, USA. Concurrently, he is Director of the Institute for Empirical Social Science Research at Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. Dr Bian is a co-founder (with Professor Li Lulu) of the Chinese General Social Survey, which is a public data archive available to domestic and international scholars. Author of 13 books and more than 130 research articles on topics of China’s social stratification, social networks and institutional change, Dr Bian’s current projects include the development of the sociology of guanxi, a panel study about networks and jobs in Chinese cities, and East Asian social networks. He was recognized as one of the 2014-2017 Elsevier most-cited Chinese researchers in social science.

Yang Xiao, Doctor of Sociology, is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Shaanxi Normal University. Her research interests include social stratification, social mobility, social networks and social capital. She has published about ten academic articles in journals such as Urban Studies, Sociological Study and the Chinese Journal of Sociology. She has also taken part in eight major scientific research projects of The National Social Science Fund of China.