Tom Cliff is an ethnographer of Chinese political economy at the Australian National University.

Education Activities: Tom is the Deputy Director (Education) of the School of Culture, History, and Language, and the founding convenor of the Bachelor of Philosophy (Humanities and Social Sciences), or PhB (HaSS) — the ANU's elite and demanding undergraduate research program in the HaSS disciplines. He teaches ASIA2099/6099 “Social Power in China: Family to Family-State” and an undergraduate reseach unit.

Research Activities: Tom is currently writing a book on political ideals, social mobilisation, and the structure-agency problem in China. The immediate context is rural non-state welfare and industrial restructuring in the PRC.

Tom’s book project-in-waiting is a study of categorisation and the realms of political consciousness through the Socialist and Post-Socialist eras in the PRC; it will be told through biography, ethnography, and documents of government.

In 2018, Tom's first book Oil and Water: Being Han in Xinjiang (Chicago University Press, 2016) won the Association for Asian Studies' E Gene Smith prize for Best Book on Inner Asia.

Please see Google Scholar for recent publications.

PhD. (Chinese Studies; Ethnographic Political Economy, ANU)

China's Motor: Entrepreneurs and private enterprise. Family and lineage. 

Institutions: of production, market, and social order.

Charity: State structures and mobilisation. Non-state welfare and public goods. 

Experiences: of frontier settlement; of the Socialist State-Owned Enterprise.