He graduated from UCLA with a PhD in sociology and, before joining CUNY, was a tenured associate professor at the Chinese Universty of Hong Kong. He is interested in the institutional and organizational analysis of Chinese economy and society and has recently published "Chinese townships and villages as industrial corporations" (2001), "Kinship networks and entrepreneurs in China's transitional economy" (2004), both in American Journal of Sociology, and “Lineage networks, rural entrepreneurs, and Max Weber” (2005) in Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 15.