C. Patterson (Pat) Giersch is a historian of modern China and Inner Asia. His early work sought to understand the early modern origins of China's ethnic diversity, culminating in a book on conquest, migration, and cultural encounters in China's Southwest. Giersch continues to investigate transnational caravan businesses that once plied routes across South China and Southeast Asia. His latest book examines the intersection of private business, state-led development, and the production of economic inequality in China's diverse borderlands.
A history of China's desperately unequal modern economic landscape that begins in the nation's remote Southwest but ends by providing new understandings of ethnic inequality and the origins of China's unique corporate organizations.