Biography

Born in 1955, Li Peilin, from the Shandong province, began his academic career studying philosophy. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from Shandong University in 1982. He studied French before coming to France in 1983, where he obtained his DEA in sociology at the Université Lyon 2 and then enrolled at the Université Paris 1 (Panthéon Sorbonne) where he completed his doctorate in sociology in 1987.

He was one of the first Chinese people to attend university and go on to study for a postgraduate degree in France, since China’s reform last century. He went back to China in 1988 to begin his academic life at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 1993, he was promoted to Vice-Director of the Sociology Research Institute, part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where he worked from 1993 to 2013. He was appointed academician in 2011. Since 2013, he has been Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) in Beijing. In addition, he was the former President of the Chinese Sociological Association in 2008. Since 2018, he has been a member of the Standing Committee and Deputy Director of the special committee for social construction of the National People's Congress of China.

His scientific work has been focused on modernity and changes in social structures, property rights, companies and organizations, social stratification and social mobility. He has done extensive work on the middle-classes, and the urban and economic integration of migrant workers in China. He is also currently hosting several large research projects, including the “Chinese General Social Survey”, one of largest and earliest national sociological surveys since 2006. In addition, Li Peilin is working on the annual report the “China society blue book” on the social trends in China, which he edited. He is Editor-in-Chief of the first academic journal on sociology in China, the Journal of Chinese Sociology.
 
He has published and edited numerous articles, including about 50 books and essay collections in Chinese, English, and French, on social stratification and mobility (particularly Chinese domestic migrant workers) and economic sociology (particularly on Chinese State companies). In 1991, when he returned to France, he translated, the acclaimed book by Henri Mendras La fin des paysans (The vanishing peasant: innovation and change in French agriculture) into Chinese. His most important books and articles include:  Another invisible hand: social structure transformation (one of 3 first prizes for economics, law and sociology in the first National Award for outstanding achievements in the Youth Social Scientists of China) - co-edited with Li Qiang and Ma Rong, Sociology and the Chinese Society Academic Press of China, 2008 (900 pages) - Chinese Society: Change and Transformation, Routledge, 2012 - Social Reform and Social Governance, China Social Sciences Press, 2014;  co-ed. with Seung Kuk Kim and Shujiro Yazawa, A Quest for East Asian Sociologies, Seoul National University Press, 2014 - Building an Olive-Shaped Distribution Society: An Analysis Based on Data from the Chinese Social Survey for 2006–2013 (with Zhu Di), Social Sciences in China, 2015, n°1:45–65 - Great Change and Social Governance in Contemporary China, Spring, 2016 - Social Transformation and Chinese Experience, Routledge, 2017.
 
He is also currently hosting several large international programs - especially with India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa - and national projects, including the “Chinese General Social Survey”, one of largest and earliest national sociological surveys since 2006.
 
In 2013, Professor Li Peilin and Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger decided to create an International Associated Laboratory (LIA) Post-Western Sociologies and Fieldwork in France and in China, along with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. They are co-chairing this International Laboratory for China and France respectively, and over the last ten years, they have organized many conferences, workshops, and published several books.