Instead of reading the intro to his book, I spent the last 20 minutes translating Li Bozhong's biography. From the original Chinese:

Li Bozhong
PhD. Born in Kunming, Yunnan on October 10, 1949. Graduate of the history department at Xiamen University. In 1985, appointed a research assistant and assistant director of the Zhejiang Social Sciences Institute History Department. In 1993, appointed researcher at the China Social Sciences Institute. In late 1998, came to Qinghua University, where he was made a professor, and a member of the Qinghua Humanities and Social Sciences Institute Academics Committee, a member of the Qinghua 21st Century Academic Research Development Committee, and as a joint professor with Nankai University, the China People's University, and Yunnan University. In addition, he was China Historical Economics Institute operational overseer, as well as vice-president. He has held positions at UCLA (1988), the French National Institute for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences (1989), Tokyo University (1990), the University of Michigan (1991), the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1993), Cambridge University (1996), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1997), Keio University (2000), and other professorships at noted institutions abroad. His publications include "Agricultural Development in Jiangnan during the Tang Dynasty", "Development and Regression: Research on the Production Capabilities of Ming-Qing Jiangnan", "Agricultural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1620-1850", "The Early Industrialization of Jiangnan, 1550-1850"; besides these, he has published, domestically and abroad, many academic papers on questions relating to China's economic history.

He is co-teaching History 669 (Ming-Qing, late-imperial) with James Lee this semester. The book that was assigned this week, mainly for the native Chinese speakers/readers, is 《江南的早期工业化，１５５０－１８５０》, "The Early Industrialization of Jiangnan, 1550-1850". The iconoclastic idea seems to be that industrialization happened in China to a limited degree during the late Ming/early Qing, even before it was imported from the West.