"What Is Our Nation but a Machine That Is Learning?": Venture Capitalism and Governance in Contemporary China

Jamie Wong

Postdoctoral Academy Scholar

Harvard University

Jamie Wong is a postdoctoral Academy Scholar at The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She received her PhD in the History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As an STS scholar and a political and economic anthropologist, she focuses broadly on the relationship between computational technologies and governance in China, particularly as impacted by emerging global systems of technology and finance. Based on her dissertation research, her first book project, The Weight of Scale, explores the confluence of venture capitalism, digital economy, and Chinese statecraft. Through fieldwork with venture capital investors, start-up founders, and their corporate and government partners, she investigates how their understanding and practices of nested logics of “scale" herald new configurations of Chinese state and society. In a parallel research endeavor, she also studies the implications of China's internet culture and digital economy for governance and civil discourse.