The Communist Party vs. China’s Labor Laws
President Xi Jinping’s support of a recent crackdown on workers’ attempts to organize a union is part of a broader centralization of power and repression of basic rights.
Articles by: Eli Friedman
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Eli Friedman is the author of Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China. He teaches at Cornell University.
The End of the “End of History”
In China and beyond, liberalized markets aren't fostering democracy — they're undermining it.
Evicting the Underclass
China’s campaign to expel migrant workers from Beijing is designed to wring more profit from urban land and reserve the city for elites.
The Life and Resistance of a Chinese Worker
One worker's tale of exploitation and fighting back in the new China.
Marketizing China
Factory relocations and land privatizations have put Chinese migrant workers on the defensive.
The Primary Contradiction
China’s leftist revival is overstated. The country’s new “Maoists" cede too much ground to nationalism and the market.
The Urbanization of the Chinese Working Class
China’s ambitious new urbanization plan comes with a set of contradictions the Communist Party won’t be able to control.
China’s New Labor Insurgency
Worker militancy has shown cracks in both China’s economic plan and the Communist Party’s official trade unions.
Outside the New China
The exploitative relationship between city and countryside pervades Chinese life. Nowhere is inequality in access to public goods clearer than in the country’s urban education system.
China in Revolt
Few in the West are aware of the drama unfolding in today’s “epicenter of global labor unrest.” A scholar of China exposes its tumultuous labor politics and their lessons for the Left.