Jia-Ching Chen

Jia-Ching is Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his PhD in City & Regional Planning at the UC Berkeley. His research examines China’s emerging role in the global green economy, and its impact on the increasingly linked geographies of food and energy. His current book project documents how in the rapid construction of the Chinese solar industry, national industrial policy and land use planning practices have negatively impacted rural society and environments in China. This research shows how these conditions shape global sustainability outcomes in ways that are endemic to and unaccounted for in existing markets and policies supporting solar energy utilization. His work aims to develop new policy research practices that combine critical social science with industrial and environmental planning to highlight and substantively address such global disparities. Jia-Ching brings many years as an activist to his work and believes that grassroots solidarity and movement building are the fundamental tools for furthering models of development that uphold an environmental justice agenda. He has worked as a researcher, educator and planner at the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, the National Taiwan University Building & Planning Foundation, and several non-profit organizations in the U.S., for which he was recognized with the Mario Savio Award.