In this talk, Dr. Rao will trace how China’s “internet finance” industry, represented by thousands of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending platforms, developed from government-supported “financial innovations” to criminalized Ponzi schemes that ruined the life’s savings of millions. He will unravel this economic process through the stories of ordinary investors and borrowers drawn from 20 months of ethnographic study, and offer an anthropological angle to understand the happening of a financial, social, and moral crisis.

Yichen Rao is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. As an anthropologist, he studies the rapid development of contemporary China through the challenges digital technologies have imposed on human society. Dr. Rao has written ethnographies about China’s controversial internet addiction treatment camps, internet finance platforms, and the 996 overwork issues in the IT industry. He published in journals like "Economic Anthropology" and "History of Psychology." His paper "Dreaming like a Market" on China's P2P lending industry was awarded the Schneider Prize Honorable Mention by the American Anthropological Association.

Zoom registration link: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_VdCMd2jtQG6CHbxsI4xC8g

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