China

Four years later, still a graveyard of Chinese youth

Submitted by Nao on Feb 5 2015 07:35

In 2014, on the eve of China’s national day celebrations, scenes recalling those of four years ago appeared in Chinese headlines. Foxconn became known to the world four years ago when thirteen of its young workers jumped to their deaths in quick succession. The death of young Foxconn worker and poet Xu Lizhi reminded us that in this Fortune 500 company that produces some 40% of the world’s electronics, the cruelty and hopelessness of workers' situation has not changed. But most of us are unaware that Xu is not alone. At least five other workers, and likely more than that, have joined him this year. Many other workers have taken their own lives since the famous 13.

Land grabs in contemporary China

Submitted by Nao on Jan 6 2015 04:40

Translation of article summarizing original research about land grabs in China since the 1990s, concluding that this ongoing expropriation of peasants is more severe and violent than the peak of Britain's enclosures in the early 19th century.

"Professor Xu": Laid-off plastics worker becomes China's Walter White

Submitted by Nao on Dec 8 2014 11:09

Repost of a story of interest less for its similarity to "Breaking Bad," and more for what this similarity (and differences) reveal about capitalist development, increasing precarization and exclusion of "surplus" proletarians, and how criminality enables a few proles to prosper at the expense of many others, in a vicious circle of class cannibalism.

Another shoe strike in the Pearl River Delta: Lide, Guangzhou

Submitted by Nao on Dec 6 2014 19:01

Translation of a brief report on a strike of 2,500 workers at a shoe factory in Guangzhou that began today. As with the strike of about 50,000 workers at another company's shoe factories in the Pearl River Delta several months ago, one focus of this strike is on the company's non-payment of social security, along with factory relocation.

Sold on promises: China's intra-working class exploitation

Submitted by Nao on Nov 20 2014 08:36

An interview recorded from memory. This blog is about the upsurges that occur, the cracks that appear in China’s system. But sometimes the picture we give out of a China in revolt is rosy in a way that misses the very deep scarring in this society—the kind of fracturing of trust within the working class, between friends and family, in the relationships that underlie organization.

Ba Jin and the “Arshinov Platform”

Submitted by Battlescarred on Nov 11 2014 21:35

A short article on the connection of the great Chinese novelist and anarchist Ba Jin with the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists

The margins and the centre: for a new history of the Cultural Revolution

Submitted by Nao on Nov 10 2014 15:47

Repost of an informative reflection on the lessons to be learned from China's "Cultural Revolution" in light of China's grim political situation circa 2014, centered on a review of Yiching's Wu's pathbreaking new book, Cultural Revolution at the Margins.