John Knight has conducted research on the Chinese economy for more than two decades, and has published many journal articles, including papers on income distribution, poverty, wages, migration, education, subjective well-being, and economic growth. His books on China include The Rural-Urban Divide: Economic Disparities and Interactions in China and Towards a Labour Market in China (both with Lina Song and both published by OUP). The latter book received the Richard A. Lester Prize, awarded at Princeton University, for "the outstanding book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations published in 2005." He is a long-serving editor of the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.
Sai Ding graduated from Nankai University and obtained her doctorate at Birmingham University before becoming a Research Fellow in Oxford, where she collaborated with John Knight on the research for this book. Her current research is on corporate investment and finance in China.