Yuxi (Alicia) Zhong

Business and the State in Porfirian Monterrey, 1890–1910

Who built Porfirian Mexico's "national industry," and on whose terms? Comparing the Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey and the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, this project shows how an informal division of labor between Governor Bernardo Reyes and Monterrey's merchants produced two different firm strategies: a steelworks built around firm-specific state protection, and a brewery that grew through vertical integration and early industrial paternalism.

Based on Fundidora shareholder records at the Archivo General del Estado de Nuevo León, Reyes's gubernatorial memoranda and the Monterrey press.

Chinese Firms and Regulatory Compliance in Nearshoring Mexico

Why do firms that set out to comply with host-country rules so often end up in violation? Drawing on fieldwork in Monterrey, Mexico City and Guadalajara (2023–24), including 30+ interviews with managers, employees and compliance consultants, this project traces how successive waves of Chinese business, from long-established wholesalers and restaurateurs to industrial parks and platform firms, have adapted to Mexican regulation amid U.S.–China rivalry.

Chinese Auto-Parts Supply Chains in Monterrey

Project lead of a Shanghai University summer research project (2024) examining Chinese auto-parts supply chains in Monterrey, tracing how suppliers, assemblers and logistics intermediaries are plugged into the region's industrial cluster amid the nearshoring boom.

Field research in Monterrey, summer 2024.

Digital Nomadism and the East Asian Developmental State

Taking China as a representative case of the East Asian developmental state, this project uses digital nomadism as a lens on how state policy, rural revitalization and poverty alleviation shape new forms of mobile work, with planned comparisons to Thailand, the Philippines and Mexico.