Lu Zhang's research interests include China and East Asian studies, political economy in transnational societies, labor and social movements, international development and globalization, work and organizations, and law and society.  Her dissertation, entitled “Globalization, Market Reform, and Dynamics of Changing State-Labor Relations in Post-Reform China: A Case Study of the Chinese Automobile Industry,” examines the changing labor relations in the Chinese automobile industry, and the reconstruction of the state-labor-business relationship in post-Reform China, through evolving forms of “boundary-drawing” (e.g., global capital relocation, state labor policy and legislation, labor force dualism) at the shopfloor, local, national and global levels. The research was based on extensive fieldwork at seven major automobile factories in six cities in China between 2004-2007, with financial support from Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF).

During her fellowship at the RCCPB, Lu investigated the impact of the 2008 Labor Contract Law on China’s labor relations and labor unrest, with a special focus on agency employment (labor dispatch). Lu is also interested in exploring the patterns, strategies, processes, and effects of capital relocation within China and out of China to the new low-cost sites (such as Vietnam). Through carefully selected comparative cases, the study examined the roles of the central and local governments, labor legislations, local labor markets conditions in affecting capital relocation decisions and industrial and social upgrading at the new production sites.

My dissertation, entitled "Central State Monopoly, Local State Competition, and Global Market Engagement: Market-Building as State-Building in China's Tobacco Industry," examines China's economic transition and current state-market relationships with regard to the reforms of state-owned industries over the last 28 years. This study explains two puzzles: first, why China's tobacco industry – a sector that is supposedly controlled by a central planning system – has been "monopolized" by local governments during China's Reform era; and second, why this particular state-owned industry has boomed in some regions based not on privatization but on the strategies of horizontal combination and vertical integration erected by the local firms. The central thesis is that the state bureaucracies governing China's tobacco industry have strengthened themselves by involving themselves in the market-building projects. My research article from this project has appeared in the European Journal of Sociology. During my fellowship at the RCCPB, I will continue my research regarding the interaction between China's political system and business organizations with China's increasing engagement into the global market.