China is generally regarded as the new economic
powerhouse in the global political economy. Some even talk of an emerging
power, which may in time replace the US as the global economy’s hegemon. And
yet, there is a dark underside to this ‘miracle’ in the form of workers’ long
hours, low pay and lack of welfare benefits. Increasing levels of inequality
have gone hand in hand with widespread working conditions characterised by
super-exploitation. Nevertheless, Chinese workers have not simply accepted
these conditions of exploitation. They have started to fight back. In a new
special issue of the journal Globalizations, co-edited by Chun-Yi Lee
and myself, the contributors have analysed these various forms of resistance by
Chinese workers and the way they are organised. In this blog post, I will
provide a brief overview of the contents of this special issue.
The Labour Party is currently embroiled
in a bitter internal struggle over the election of its next leader. While the
challenger Owen Smith enjoys the predominant support of the Labour MPs in
Parliament as well as the party establishment, the vast majorities of
constituencies and individual labour members endorse Jeremy Corbyn. Critics of
Corbyn argue that he lacks the necessary leadership qualities, visible in his allegedly
weak role in the EU referendum, and is unable to ensure a victory by the Labour
Party against the Conservatives in the next general elections. In this blog
post, I will argue that this kind of criticism misunderstands completely what the
current movement around Jeremy Corbyn is about.
China is
frequently considered to be an example of successful developmental catch-up.
And yet, the country’s impressive growth rates are to a large extent based on
the super-exploitation of its workforce expressed in long working hours, low
wages, and a general lack of basic welfare benefits such as medical insurance
and work-injury insurance (Chan
and Selden, 2014, p. 606). In our recently published
article ‘Exploitation and resistance: a comparative analysis of the Chinese
cheap labour electronics and high-value added IT sectors’, published in the journal Globalizations and freely accessible online,
Chun-Yi Lee and I compare the electronics sector in the area of Shenzhen, based
on cheap labour assembling goods for export, with the IT
sector in the area of Shanghai, relying
on a more skilled workforce manufacturing high-value added goods. It is asked in what way these rather different
locations within the global political economy condition the form and contents
of resistance in these two sectors.
