Design, particularly product design, maintains a close and intricate relationship with the industrialisation process and cultural and aesthetic contexts, thereby prominently exemplifying the paradoxical implications of globalisation on cultural practices and identity construction. This demonstrates the special attributes of design, especially product design: it can serve as a social medium for loading, extending, and exchanging information, and Dan’s PhD research exploits this quality by using product design as a lens to gain insight into the entanglements generated by China's cultural-political-economic identities.

Dan's research draws on the design practices and perspectives of Chinese independent designers to understand their contradictions and entanglements with China's past cultural identities and modern design identities, as a way of deconstructing why culture is a burden to them. 

Jean Baudrillard claimed that the manufacture of industrial products is not only a process of material production but also a construction of consciousness and discourse. And China is in this secondary discourse. Apart from being the world's factory for low-end manufacturing, the Shanzhai factory is also a highly negative label. In Chinese, Shanzhai means “mountain stronghold”, but it is more often used to refer to fake goods representing a subversive play on the original. Dan's research explores the relationship between the economics, cultural roots, and socio-legal system of the Shanzhai, without losing sight of its artistry and potential to represent pluriversal design.

Dan's research also covers the national design identities and the participation of Chinese designers in international design exhibitions, such as Milan Design Week, in order to highlight the neglect of the role of design in China's propaganda system and their limited definition of the act of cultural dissemination.