Digital capitalists in code: investment practices among Chinese AI engineers and the transcendence of proletarianization

Drawing on 16 months of fieldwork and 37 in-depth interviews with Chinese AI engineers, this study examines how technical workers engage in investment as a response to occupational deskilling. Employing labor process theory, we argue that engineers deploy their expertise to develop “robust business common sense,” resisting their reduction to interchangeable “code adjusters.” By mastering financial analysis, participants transform from proletarianized workers into analysts possessing comprehensive commercial understanding. Findings reveal that many participants derive their primary income from investment returns rather than wages, retaining employment primarily for industry acuity and networks. We theorize these engineer-investors as a new class fraction whose structural position operates simultaneously through wage labor and direct market participation. Their success stems not from insider technical knowledge, but from cultivating the holistic commercial awareness systematically denied to them through fragmented work organization.