Dr Ruiyi Zhu

I am an anthropologist with primary research interests in global China, Mongolia, (post-) socialism, and development. 

Building on my doctoral research, I am working on my first monograph about Chinese investment and labour in Mongolia’s extractive economy. I have published articles addressing the grassroots aspirations for standards, the short-lived eternity of socialist friendship, and the dilemmas of translation at the Sino-Mongolian interface. 

As a Research Fellow with the Silk Roads Programme at King’s College, Cambridge, I will pivot my focus from labour surplus to 'protein deficiency' within the broader framework of global China. I aim to explore how biopolitics, nutritional science, and the transnational food industry shape contemporary Chinese dietary thoughts and practices. 

I received my BA from Pomona College and my MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Before returning to Cambridge, I was a Global Perspectives on Society postdoctoral teaching fellow at NYU Shanghai.  

Publications

• 2024. Negotiating Standards in Sino-Mongolian Industrial Relations, China Information 38 (2), 267-288. https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X241258971
• 2024. Chinese Standards from the Ground Up, China Information 38 (2), 135-156. Written with Miriam Driessen. https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X241248412
• 2023. Review of On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border, written by Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey. REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia 12 (2), 259-260. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/reg.2023.a936454
• 2022. Review of Collaborative Damage: An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization, written by Mikkel Bunkenborg, Morten Nielsen, and Morten Axel Pedersen. Inner Asia 24 (2), 342–344. https://brill.com/view/journals/inas/24/2/article-p342_12.xml
• 2022. “The Mine Was Our Home”: Narrativising Nostalgia between Socialist and Post-Socialist Mining Zones, Made in China. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2022/07/29/the-mine-was-our-home-narrativising-nostalgia-Between-socialist-and-post-socialist-mining-zones/
• 2022. The Short-Lived Eternity of Friendship: Chinese Workers in Socialist Mongolia (1955-1964) in Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour, London: Verso, pp. 250-264. Written with Christian Sorace. 
• 2021. The Double-tongued Dilemma: Translating Chinese Workers’ Relations in Mongolia, Made in China. https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/01/25/the-double-tongued-dilemma-translating-chinese-workers-relations-in-mongolia/