Friedman Eli - China on strike: narratives of workers resistance

Praise for China o n Strike

Chinas rise as a global economic power has been paralleled by a growing militancy among its working class. In this unfolding process, workers are gaining the confidence, experience, and tenacity to strike and to win. Censorship and political repression by the countrys ruling party makes firsthand accounts of these strugglesespecially in Englishextremely rare. China on Strike fills that gap through eye-opening and compelling narratives of Chinas new generation of worker-militants and strike leaders. Its a must-read.

Paul Mason, economics editor for Channel 4 News, author of Postcapitalism and Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global

As these vivid case studies illustrate, the real sleeping dragonChinas enormous factory proletariatis wide awake and fighting back on all fronts. Indeed, here is firsthand evidence that Chairman Xi Jinping may soon confront the largest labor rebellion in history.

Mike Davis, professor emeritus, University of California, Riverside, and author of Planet of Slums

China on Strike is a much-needed, detailed account of labor struggle in the Pearl River Delta region, Chinas manufacturing industrial heartland. It is a story brilliantly told from migrant workers own perspectives, about all that keeps this factory of the world moving.

Hsiao-Hung Pai, author of Scattered Sand: The Story of Chinas Rural Migrants

This book breathes authenticity. China on Strike is a collection of oral histories created by a network of workers, students, students become workers, and intellectuals practicing in related fields, whose underlying concern is to make known what is really happening on the ground in China. The scenes they describe very much resemble the rank-and-file self-organization of workers in the United States in the early 1930s. Let us hope that as our Chinese comrades become more organized and powerful they are able to retain the wonderful vitality of the early actions described in this remarkable book.

Staughton Lynd, labor historian and coeditor with Alice Lynd of Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers

China on Strike provides the most detailed and vivid accounts of migrant workers struggles in the Pearl River Delta, the powerhouse of Chinas reform and industrialization. The struggles of these workers shed light on the future of the labor movement not only in China, but worldwide. A must-read book for readers concerned with labor activism and international solidarity!

Pun Ngai, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, author of Made in China and Migrant Labor in China

This book provides an exhaustive and vivid account of migrant workers strikes in China. Many authors of this book are young, well-educated, and passionate labor activists. Through the eyes and hearts of these organic intellectuals, readers can feel how a new working class is creating itself in struggles. It will inspire imagination about the future of China, globalization, and the labor movement.

Chris King-Chi Chan, City University of Hong Kong

China is not only the elephant in the room of global capitalism but the site of one of the worlds greatest ongoing labor upheavals. Chinas working class in formation has mounted mass strikes against all oddsa one-party dictatorship, unions controlled by the Communist Party, waves of internal migration, and, of course, global capital itself. Yet, Chinas mostly young workers rebel in growing numbers, forcing concessions from the bureaucratic state as well as from giant corporations. China on Strike provides a unique view of the developing consciousness and actions of these daring workers as the strike movement of recent years took shape. This is a book that should be read by all those who care about the future possibilities of working-class power everywhere.

Kim Moody, author of In Solidarity: Essays on Working-Class Organization and Strategy in the United States

China has become not only the workshop of the capitalist world but also the epicenter of the global class struggle. The workers in China are making history. This is the time to read China on Strike , a book about ordinary workers and worker-activists and how they fight for a better world tomorrow.

Minqi Li, associate professor of economics, University of Utah

Workers throughout the world are fighting wage cuts, bad working conditions, and runaway shops. Without rights or protections taken for granted elsewhere, Chinese workers have struck thousands of times over these and other issues. China on Strike gives voice to factory struggles rarely reported in the United States and confirms the central role played by a new generation of rank-and-file leaders. Their inspiring exercise of shop-floor power is worthy of close study by labor activists here.

Steve Early, former CWA organizer and author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress

Over the past two decades China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse, and the countrys explosive growth has been a defining feature of the global economy. Now Chinas workers are taking center stage. China on Strike paints a vivid, firsthand picture of working conditions in the heart of Chinas manufacturing miracle, the impetus for tens of thousands of job actions and labor disputes each year. The stories featured in China on Strike put to rest the notion that todays factory workers are helpless victims. On the contrary, they demonstrate that its still possible to fight back at work and win, even against the worlds most powerful corporations and an unbending, one-party state. The book is testament to the enduring power of solidarity, and the creativity that bubbles up when workers stand up and fight back.

Mark Brenner, Labor Notes

Preface to the English Edition

Given Chinas current system, it is better to cut off the bosss production.

electronics worker in Shenzhen

China on Strike: Narratives of Workers Resistance is the outcome of an incredible collective effort by many people scattered across many countries. Not only is this book the most detailed account of the process and outcomes of worker resistance in China available in English, it is also an example of first-rate public sociology. It is hardly debatable that China represents the future of global capitalism, but the stories collected in this volume suggest that it is also the future of the labor movement. In light of this, we have put together this English translation in the hopes of gaining greater international exposure for worker struggles in China.

The book does not detail the entirety of worker struggles in China, but rather is concerned with migrant workers in Guangdong Provinces Pearl River Delta. Migrant in the Chinese context refers to the 270 million people who have left the countryside to work in the city. Because of the restrictive household registration system (the hukou ) they are second-class citizens in urban areas, excluded from a variety of social services. Migrants now constitute the large majority of the workforce in many industriesincluding manufacturing, construction, and low-end service jobsbut they by no means represent the entirety of the working class.

Similarly, the Pearl River Delta is only one region in a vast country (see maps below). This area has attracted more manufacturers than anywhere else in China, and has been the most dynamic regional economy over the past thirty years. It has also attracted the most migrant workers and served as ground zero for expanding worker resistance. While it would be wrong to assume that Guangdong represents the future of China, worker struggles there are certainly more frequent and more intense than elsewhere. It is for these reasons that the editors have focused their activism and scholarship on this region.

Map 1: Peoples Republic of China