How Migrants Made Markets: Shenzhen and China's Reform and Opening
Taomo Zhou, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore
White Hall - 106
10:10-11:25 am

Located immediately north of Hong Kong, Shenzhen is China’s first and most successful special economic zone (SEZ) and is often celebrated as the “social laboratory” of reform and opening. Official narratives credit visionary decisions by Beijing’s top leaders for transforming an impoverished border town into a global technology hub and the “Silicon Valley of the East.” This talk offers a more complicated account. I argue that Shenzhen represented a distinct post-socialist project of economic sovereignty in which migrants created markets for the state. Focusing on the Overseas Chinese Farm as a key zonal institution, the talk examines how two marginalized migrant groups—Southeast Asian Chinese refugees and ethnic minority women from China’s hinterland—were mobilized to drive Shenzhen’s development while being systematically excluded from its long-term gains. Through a comparative analysis of Guangming Overseas Chinese Livestock Farm’s transformation from a dairy operation into a biotechnology innovation hub and the parallel evolution of Overseas Chinese Town into a state-led cultural and tourism complex, the talk shows how migrant labor incubated technological innovation, generated export revenue, and advanced nationalist agendas, even as these communities were ultimately dispossessed through China’s dualistic citizenship regime and state-controlled land system.

Taomo Zhou (Ph.D. Cornell 2015) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies and Dean’s Chair in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Her first book, Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2019), won a Foreign Affairs “Best Books of 2020” award and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Harry J. Benda Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Taomo is currently working on her second book project tentatively entitled “Made in Shenzhen: A Global History of China’s First Special Economic Zone,” which is under advance contract with Stanford University Press. She is also researching on motherhood during the Cold War.

2026 International Interdisciplinary Conference on Myanmar's Borderlands (2026 IICMB)

A virtual conference hosted by the Inya Institute (Yangon), Cornell University's Southeast Asia Program (SEAP), and their Southeast Asia-based partners.

Myanmar’s multilayered crisis is profoundly reshaping the socio-economic and geo-political dynamics of the country’s borderlands—regions that have evolved into spaces of exchange, negotiation, and collaboration across geographical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. The emergence of these spaces has been uneven, unfolding under stringent administrative control and persistent insecurity and marked by fluctuating intensity and periodic pushback from central authorities. Yet, the potential of borderlands to provide local and trans-local communities and networks with opportunities to shape the country’s future remains tremendous.

The conference’s focus on interconnectedness will highlight how inclusive learning and dialogue, local and trans-local community engagement, and recognition of our interdependence with the natural environment can further strengthen borderland dynamics across all markers. It will broaden the conversation on borderland issues that may only be addressed through the prism of ethnicity or framed as issues specific to group identities. It will also encourage dialogue across communities, inviting them to discuss the challenges they face and the aspirations they hold.

invite scholars and students to submit original research papers and/or panels covering any area of Myanmar borders with China, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India and addressing any of the following topics:

• borderland dynamics and their local and trans-local communities

• networks and partnerships emerging across ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic boundaries

• communities, networks, and trade across borders

• natural resources and challenges to environmental protection in borderlands

• legal and illegal border migration

• humanitarian relief to refugees and public health in borderlands

• border regimes and governance

• infrastructure(s) and illicit economies and activities

• non-human mobility in borderlands

• formal and non-formal education in borderlands

• other themes related to Myanmar’s borderlands.

In order to preserve the confidentiality of presenters, the conference program will not be available for circulation beyond the group of conference presenters. Conference presenters will also be expected to follow the Chatham House Rule.

The conference will be held entirely online. Due to the time difference between Myanmar and the U.S., panels will be held in the evening for presenters based in Myanmar, Thailand, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and the morning for those located in the U.S.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Thuy Linh Nguyen, Associate Professor of History from Mount Saint Mary College.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Abstract
My presentation explores the environmental history of the French introduction and mass planting of exotic timber species, such as Casuarina equisetifolia—commonly known as filao—and eucalyptus, to reforest and stabilize the vast moving sand dunes covering the majority of Vietnam’s 2000-mile coast, highlighting their effects on the coastal environment and indigenous communities. This research questions the colonial stereotype that portrayed coastal sand dunes as empty and barren landscapes devoid of vegetation. In contrast, as my presentation demonstrates, the ecological multiplicity of the dunes offers a new lens for examining various topics, including traditional knowledge, local economies, resources, property, land reclamation, and colonial state power.

About the Speaker
Thuy Linh Nguyen is an Associate Professor of History at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, NY. Dr. Nguyen is a historian of modern Vietnam. A native of Vietnam, she received her PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently working as Associate professor of History at Mount Saint Mary College. Newburgh, NY. Her first book, Childbirth, Maternity and Medical Pluralism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1880–1945 (University of Rochester Press, 2016), examines the interactions between French colonial medicine and Vietnamese childbirth practices and their impact on maternal and infant health care. Her second book, Vietnam’s Coal Frontier: Mining, Environment and Empire (Cambridge University Press, November 2025), explores the environmental, economic, and social history of large-scale coal mining in French colonial Vietnam. She has also published peer-reviewed articles on other topics of modern Vietnamese history.

Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Aurore Candier, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Abstract
While living and working in Burma for over twenty years, Aurore Candier conducted research on the evolution of knowledge and concepts among Burmese elites, especially as evolved in their encounters with other cultures in the early and modern periods. Through conceptual history and discourse analysis, Candier has investigated the semantic shifts in Burmese words and concepts through a diachronic corpus made up of texts from different literary genres and traced the progressive changes in the imaginary and thought of the Burmese Buddhist universe. She has explored semantic changes in Burmese concepts and categories of knowledge such as “reform,” “time,” categorizations of “people,” “secular knowledge,” and “astrology.” She has forged an intervention which challenges some of the most basic assumptions of Burmese historiography, especially as conceived of in the classical sense.

About the Speaker
Aurore Candier has been Director of the Center for Burma Studies and Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University (USA) since 2024. She is a historian of Burma, where she has conducted research for over two decades, building strong ties with local scholars, students, and artists thanks to her fluency in Burmese. Her work spans pre-colonial Mainland Southeast Asian politics, early 20th-century colonial history, and Burmese intellectual and cultural history. She focuses on the longue durée of ideas and knowledge in Burma and contributes to interdisciplinary projects on astrology and divination in Burmese society.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.