
Biography
BEN KLETZER (Ph.D., University of California San Diego, 2025) is an assistant professor of East Asian history, specializing in Modern China (1949 – present). His research examines the intersection of revolutionary politics, technical expertise, and the developmental state. His manuscript, “China’s Dream of a Red Railway: Technocrats and the Making of an Industrial Power, 1945 – 1978,” analyzes how engineers and technologies shaped the development of the Chinese political economy after 1949. Dr. Kletzer’s transnational research integrates economics and sociology with historical sources in English, Chinese, and Russian to understand how economic decision-making functioned in the early People’s Republic of China and constructed an infrastructural base for current development. Dr. Kletzer contributed a chapter, “Burning Coal to Conserve Copper: Locomotive Technology and Resource Constraints in China, 1952-78” to the forthcoming volume Revolutionary Natures: New Environmental Histories of China’s Mao Era (1949-1976) (University of Washington Press). He also recently published an article on the continuity of technological development in Japanese Manchuria and postcolonial China in the journal Railroad History. He has presented at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, the Business History Conference, the Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology, East China Normal University, and the Hagley Museum & Library.