Suchergebnisse

Although much has been written about China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), so far little attention has been paid to how Chinese investment is affecting workers in BRI-targeted countries. To explore this dimension of global China, this paper examines the labor rights situation at Chinese-owned construction sites in Sihanoukville, a city on the Cambodian coast that in recent years has been described as embodying the worst excesses of Chinese foreign investment. Based on extensive interviews with Chinese and Cambodian workers, this paper argues that while Chinese-owned construction sites in Cambodia are grounded in a labor regime as exploitative as those in mainland China, workers' agency in the former case is further undermined by their employers' adoption of a policy of labor force dualism that draws boundaries between Chinese and Cambodian workers. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

AbstractThe narrative about Chinese NGOs active in defending migrant workers' rights describes these organizations as increasingly powerful instruments through which Chinese people take part in public affairs, develop and articulate personal interests, and collectively form a more active and participatory citizenry. This article challenges not only the idea of labour NGOs as a progressive force for political change, but also the belief – widely shared among the international labour movement – that these organizations are sprouts of independent unionism in China. After a short overview of the historical process which led to the birth of labour NGOs in China, this article analyses the relations between these NGOs and four fundamental actors – the state, the workers, international donors and other NGOs – and argues that many of these organizations are struggling as a consequence of a substantial lack of "social capital."

Since their emergence in China in the mid-1990s, labor NGOs have been exposed to a wide array of threats by the Party-state. But under Xi Jinping the repressive strategies of the Chinese authorities have become more sophisticated, with the adoption of new laws and regulations aimed at enforcing state control and efforts to cut the NGOs' access to foreign funding. How do Chinese labor NGO activists cope with these threats? Do the attacks silence them or reinforce their commitment? This article assesses the consequences of repression on two levels: at a subjective level, affecting the outlook and motivations of individual activists, and on an operational level, affecting the priorities and strategies of labor NGOs. We argue that while labor activists are equipped to deal with the "rough" side of repression, the more sophisticated approach recently pursued by Chinese authorities is much more threatening. (China J/GIGA)

Since their appearance in the mid-1990s, Chinese labour NGOs have mostly focused on disseminating labour law and guiding labour disputes through official channels. In so doing, they have assisted the Chinese Communist Party in achieving its paramount goal of maintaining social stability. In line with this approach, activists in these organizations have traditionally framed their work in terms of "public interest" or "legality," both of which resonate with the hegemonic discourses of the Party-state. However, earlier this decade a minority of Chinese labour activists began to employ some new counterhegemonic narratives centred on the experience of the labour movement and the practice of collective bargaining that attempted to recode the proletarian experience outside of its official representation. In this paper we analyze this discursive shift through the voices of the activists involved, and argue that the rise of these new counterhegemonic voices was one of the reasons that led to the Party-state cracking down on labour NGOs. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

In the past few years, the online scam industry has undergone seismic changes. After emerging in Taiwan and mainland China in the 1990s, in the 2010s scam operations began to relocate servers and offices to Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia and the Philippines. While initially the majority of operations were small-scale and largely hosted in apartments, villas, and hotel rooms, in the second half of the decade they began to assume industrial dimensions, coalescing into bigger walled compounds often hosting dozens of companies, many staffed by workers held against their will and forced to perform scams. Drawing from extensive fieldwork and a set of in-depth interviews conducted with survivors of scam compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, this paper offers the first in-depth examination of the political economy of Southeast Asia's scam industry, arguing that these operations should be framed as part of compound capitalism, a new manifestation of predatory capital. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)