Suchergebnisse

What follows is a fictionalised account of the last days of Shi Yang (1889-1923) based on the prison diaries included in the commemorative volume Shi Yang jinian wenji (Museum of the 7 February Massacre, Wuhan 1988). Shi Yang was a weiquan lawyer ante litteram, and to this day he remains an inspiration to many labour activists in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) celebrates him as a martyr of the revolution, the irony of which will not escape those who are aware of the plight of human rights lawyers and labour activists in the country today. That in April 2018 the Chinese government passed a new law to protect the reputation and honour of 'its' heroes and martyrs can be seen as further adding to the irony.

Since their appearance in the mid-1990s, Chinese labour NGOs have mostly focused on three kinds of activities: establishing workers' centres; carrying out outreach programs on labour rights; and conducting social surveys and policy advocacy. Some scholars have strongly criticised this approach, considering it excessively unbalanced towards an individualistic and narrowly legalistic view of labour rights and thus in line with the political agenda of the Party-state. Still, in the past few years, as labour conflict intensified, a handful of labour NGOs have moved forward to adopt a more militant strategy focussed on collective bargaining and direct intervention into worker collective struggles. Based on dozens of interviews with labour activists and workers and detailed analysis of two case studies of NGO-fostered collective labour mobilisation in Southern China in 2014-2015, this paper will outline the personal and political reasons that motivated these organisations to move beyond a narrow legalistic approach and turn towards collective struggles. It will also describe the strategies that Chinese labour activists have adopted in dealing with collective cases. We will conclude by examining the main challenges that labour activists in China have to face when dealing with labour unrest and by questioning the sustainability and feasibility of this new approach in the current political climate.

Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world- renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous perspectives to consider what lessons Chinese communism can offer today, and whether there is a future for the egalitarian politics that it once promised.

This is an edited and updated transcript of a November 2016 interview that was part of the Tianxia Podcast Series (http://www.chinoiresie.info/tessa-morris-suzuki-podcast-diamondmountains/). The conversation transcribed here focuses on a discussion of Tessa MorrisSuzuki's To the Diamond Mountains: A Hundred-Year Journey through China and Korea ( 2010), a travelogue based on a trip she took in 2009 to Northeast China, North Korea, and South Korea with the purpose of retracing the 1910 journey of the English adventurer and artist Emily Georgiana Kemp. We discuss the book in relation to the momentous transformations that have occurred over the long twentieth century in the areas visited by Kemp, and to the ways in which grassroots movements and new forms of survival politics are remaking Northeast Asia today.

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2017 was the year of the 'fire rooster', an animal often associated with the mythical fenghuang, a magnificently beautiful bird whose appearance is believed to mark the beginning of a new era of peaceful flourishing. Considering the auspicious symbolism surrounding the fenghuang, it is fitting that on 18 October 2017, President Xi Jinping took to the stage of the Nineteenth Party Congress to proclaim the beginning of a 'new era' for Chinese socialism. However, in spite of such ecumenical proclamations, it became immediately evident that not all in China would be welcome to reap the rewards promised by the authorities. Migrant workers, for one, remain disposable. Lawyers, activists, and even ordinary citizens who dare to express critical views also hardly find a place in Xi's brave new world. This Yearbook traces the stark new 'gilded age' inaugurated by the Chinese Communist Party. It does so through a collection of more than forty original essays on labour, civil society, and human rights in China and beyond penned by leading scholars and practitioners from around the world. ; The Australian Centre on China in the World is a publicly funded research centre. ; This project has been produced with the financial assistance of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), Australian National University, and the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie grant agreement No 654852.

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2016 was the year of the fire monkey. What better character than Sun Wukong to inspire this inaugural volume of the Made in China Yearbook? In this past year, Chinese workers and activists from all walks of life have struggled under heightened repression by the Chinese party-state, showing remarkable endurance even under these dire circumstances. Through their battles, however small or short-lived, they repeatedly challenged the message of 'harmony' put forward by the Chinese authorities, creating 'disturbances' in the imaginary heaven engineered by the party-state. All of this is nothing other than proof of the survival of the monkey spirit in Chinese society. Even when trapped under a mountain of repression, or in terrible pain due to the curse of the magic headband of state control, the monkey still manages to briefly wriggle free, reminding us that not all is well, that not everything is predictable. ; The Australian Centre on China in the World is a publicly funded research centre. ; This project has been produced with the financial assistance of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), Australian National University, and the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie grant agreement No 654852.