Yunhan Wen

I am a Postgraduate Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Princeton University, where I received my Ph.D. in Sociology in 2026. My research is driven by a fundamental curiosity about the urban: how cities come into being, what they produce, and how late urbanization—especially after 1950, in authoritarian contexts across the developing world—differs from earlier patterns observed in industrializing Europe and North America. This broad interest anchors both my empirical work and my theoretical orientation. 

My dissertation and book project, From the Soil to the Sky: Collective Economy and Party-State Urbanism in Contemporary China, is an initial step in a broader research agenda. It seeks an explanation for why China could sustain rapid, conflict-prone urbanization without losing political control. Focusing on land politics in Shenzhen and Shanghai from the beginning of Reform and Opening-Up through Xi-era reforms, I argue that China’s trajectory is best captured by what I call party-state urbanism. Party-state urbanism rests on three interlinked mechanisms: (1) calibrated central-local coupling, (2) institutionalized local variation, and (3) persistent state incorporation of landholding communities. The central authority alternates between loosening and tightening its grip on local governments, granting discretion when growth requires experimentation and reasserting discipline when local extraction generates political risk. This produces heterogeneity by design—not only across cities, but also across villages within the same city—creating the patchwork of state-village relations. At the same time, the socialist legacies have kept peasants and village elites embedded within the state apparatus—this arrangement makes villages vulnerable to extraction, co-optation, and punishment internal to the bureaucratic system, but it also necessitates a baseline of protection of peasant interests. As a result of three interlinked mechanisms, land conflict rarely scales into a translocal political challenge, allowing the Chinese party-state to sustain rapid urbanization without losing political control. You can find more about this project here. 

I believe that the most powerful insights often emerge through comparison and interdisciplinary conversation, and I strive to remain intellectually omnivorous. While my research centers on urbanization and political governance, I have also collaborated with colleagues on projects ranging from the sexual practices of older adults on antiretroviral treatment in rural South Africa to the use of computer-assisted text classification in qualitative research. My work has been published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Social Science & Medicine, and World Architecture Review. You can find more about my published work here.