Dr Yuanxie Shi (University of Chicago)
Yuanxie Shi is a historian of gender, labor, technology, and economics in modern China. After receiving her doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in August 2025, she has joined the Social Science Division there as a Harper-Schmidt Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor.

Her dissertation, “Mao’s Clever Hands: Export Lacemaking and Socialist Flexibility in Cold War, 1949-1980s,” explores an uncharted history of socialist industrialization since 1949 and during the Cold War. Rather than focusing on mechanical manufacturing and factory settings, her research examines mass production through labor-intensive needlework by millions of Chinese women, specifically in rural Chaoshan region. This project reveals the subaltern status of rural women and bridges an overlooked social category in both the socialist hierarchy of values and the international division of labor.

This talk forms part of a larger project investigating the mechanisms of socialist learning and knowledge accumulation in foreign trade during the Maoist era, through a historical and comparative study of the export lacemaking industries in Fujian and Chaoshan (Guangdong). Drawing on archival sources, it examines how state-led export initiatives prompted both regions to formalize female handicraft labor through contrasting organizational strategies: one place adopted a flexible hybrid model that integrated rural sideline production with state enterprise oversight, while the other rapidly recruited women into factory settings.

The research demonstrates that local adaptations and cross-regional collaborations enabled socialist China to respond to global market demands, while highlighting the unstable and often underrecognized role of women’s sideline labor. By foregrounding these adaptive structures, the study revisits the hybrid nature of “enterprise” in socialist business history.