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VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2, APR–JUN 2018 ANYBODY OUT THERE? The Chinese Labour Movement under Xi Made in China is a quarterly on Chinese labour, civil society, and rights. This project has been produced with the financial assistance of the Australian Centre on China in the World (CIW), the Australian National University; the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 654852; and the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University. The views expressed are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of the European Union, CIW, Lund University, or the institutions to which the authors are affiliated. ‘Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?’ Lu Xun, Preface to Call to Arms (1922) TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL (P. 6) BRIEFS (P. 7) OP-EDS (P. 11) CHINA STUDIES BETWEEN CENSORSHIP AND SELF-CENSORSHIP (P. 12) Kevin Carrico VOLUME 3, ISSUE #2 WILL THE FUTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS BE APR–JUN 2018 ‘MADE IN CHINA’? (P. 16) ISSN 2206-9119 Sarah M. Brooks CHIEF EDITORS FOCUS (P. 22) Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere CHANGES AND CONTINUITY: FOUR GUEST EDITOR DECADES OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN Kevin Lin CHINA (P. 24) Chris King-Chi Chan EDITORIAL BOARD Elisa Nesossi, Andrea Enrico Pia, Christian CHINA’S LABOUR MOVEMENT IN Sorace TRANSITION (P. 28) Geoffrey Crothall ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS Sarah M. Brooks, Kevin Carrico, Chris Chan, GONGYOU, THE NEW DANGEROUS CLASS Nellie Chu, Geoffrey Crothall, Ivan IN CHINA? (P. 36) Franceschini, Huang Wenhai, Huang Yu, Yu Chunsen Elaine Sio-Ieng Hui, Kevin Lin, Carl Minzner, Sverre Molland, Elisa Nesossi, Yu Chunsen, RECONFIGURING SUPPLY CHAINS: Zeng Jinyan, Zhang Lu TRANSREGIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND INFORMAL MANUFACTURING IN SOUTHERN COPY-EDITING CHINA (P. 40) Sharon Strange Nellie Chu EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS THE STRUGGLES OF TEMPORARY AGENCY Nan Liu, Tessie Sun WORKERS IN XI’S CHINA (P. 46) Zhang Lu ART DIRECTION Tommaso Facchin ROBOT THREAT OR ROBOT DIVIDEND? A STRUGGLE BETWEEN TWO LINES (P. 50) COVER ARTWORK Huang Yu Marc Verdugo A ‘PESSOPTIMISTIC’ VIEW OF CHINESE LABOUR NGOS (P. 56) Ivan Franceschini Kevin Lin WORK OF ARTS (P. 60) THE LAST DAYS OF SHI YANG (P. 61) Ivan Franceschini WE THE WORKERS: A CONVERSATION WITH HUANG WENHAI (P. 66) Zeng Jinyan WINDOW ON ASIA (P. 76) CHINA AND DEVELOPMENT AID: THE CASE OF ANTI-TRAFFICKING AND SEAFOOD IN SOUTHEAST ASIA (P. 78) Sverre Molland CONVERSATIONS (P. 82) HEGEMONIC TRANSFORMATION: A CONVERSATION WITH ELAINE SIO-IENG HUI (P. 82) Ivan Franceschini END OF AN ERA: A CONVERSATION WITH CARL MINZNER (P. 88) Elisa Nesossi CONTRIBUTOR BIOS (P. 94) BIBLIOGRAPHY (P. 96) EDITORIAL Anybody Out Chains, Nellie Chu shows how infrastructure projects that link China’s interior and coastal There? manufacturing regions have intensified key The Chinese Labour aspects of the country’s informal economy. In The Struggles of Temporary Agency Movement under Xi Workers in Xi’s China, Zhang Lu tracks the activism of dispatch workers in Chinese auto factories, examining the potential for this group to successfully bargain for their rights. abour activism has undergone In Robot Threat or Robot Dividend?, Huang significant transformation in China Yu considers the possible consequences of Lover the last decade. Between the mid- automation and robotisation on employment 2000s and mid-2010s, an increase in labour and labour activism in China. Finally, in A protests seemed to herald a growing and more ‘Pessoptimistic’ View of Chinese Labour self-confident labour movement. A series of NGOs, Ivan Franceschini and Kevin Lin revisit high-profile collective actions that took place the debate on labour NGOs in China, offering in 2010—in particular a strike at a Honda their own reading of the current situation. auto parts factory in Foshan in 2010—brought In the op-ed section, we include two pieces, forward a time of renewed optimism, during one by Kevin Carrico about academic self- which the public debate on Chinese labour came censorship and another by Sarah Brooks on the to be dominated by the idea of China’s workers efforts of the Chinese authorities to influence ‘awakening’ and taking their fate into their own international discourses and practices of hands. This new narrative was largely focussed human rights. The cultural section comprises on the so-called ‘new generation of migrant two essays. In We the Workers, producer Zeng workers’, presented in much of the academic Jinyan and director Huang Wenhai discuss literature and public debate as the engine of their latest documentary about labour NGOs the new wave of worker struggle. Far from and worker struggles in China. In The Last the optimism of those years, today the effects Days of Shi Yang, Ivan Franceschini presents a of economic slowdown and the tightening of fictionalised account of a revolutionary martyr civil society have thrown China’s workers into of the 1920s—a lawyer that played an important a state of uncertainty and disorientation, and role in the labour struggles of those years. We the Chinese labour movement has once again conclude the issue with a new Conversations found itself at an impasse. section, in which we feature interviews with the This issue of Made in China offers a authors of two recently released books: Elaine series of essays that aim at assessing and Sio-Ieng Hui’s Hegemonic Transformation and understanding the current conjuncture. In Carl Minzner’s End of an Era. ■ Changes and Continuity, Chris King-Chi Chan offers a retrospective of the development The Editors of industrial relations in China over the past four decades. In China’s Labour Movement in Transition, Geoffrey Crothall analyses the latest trends in Chinese labour unrest. In Gongyou, the New Dangerous Class in China?, Yu Chunsen looks into the discourses that Chinese migrant workers use to define their shared identity, probing the possibility of them becoming the foundation of a new class consciousness. In Reconfiguring Supply 6 MADE IN CHINA / 2, 2018 BRIEFS Apr-Jun 2018 BRIEFS Liu Xia Is Released, but Repression Continues Unabated APR/JUN Repression of human rights practitioners continues unabated in China. In the past few months, foreign media have widely reported on 2018 the situation of Liu Xia, the widow of late Chinese dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. Without having been formally accused of any offence, Liu was placed under house arrest in October 2010. While earlier reports claiming that Chinese Gender Issues in the Spotlight officials were preparing to allow Liu to leave the country proved unfounded, diplomatic pressure The second quarter of 2018 has brought from German Chancellor Angela Merkel led to renewed scrutiny of gender issues in China. the release of Liu Xia on 10 July, just days before Chinese women still face perilous conditions the first anniversary of her husband’s death. On in society and the workplace, often falling that day, Liu left China on a flight that brought victim to sexual harassment and discrimination her to Berlin via Helsinki. During her visit to of various kinds. The #MeToo campaign that China on 24 May, Merkel also met the wives of swept Peking University (PKU) in April this year two detained lawyers—Li Wenzu, wife of Wang well exemplifies female vulnerability to sexual Quanzhang, and Xu Yan, wife of Yu Wensheng. harassment on campus and in the workplace. Earlier in April, Li attempted to walk over 100 This movement culminated in activists’ demand kilometres from Beijing to Tianjin in search of for the university to disclose information on a answers regarding her husband’s whereabouts, rape-suicide case that occurred two decades as he has been held incommunicado since July ago, when Gao Yan, a student at PKU, committed 2015. However, her planned 12-day protest suicide after being sexually assaulted by Shen march was cut short by Chinese authorities, who Yang, at that time a professor at that institution placed her under house arrest and later charged (he would keep the position until 2011). Having her with subversion. In the meantime, Yu fired failed to intimidate the activists, PKU pledged his defence team, an action that contradicts to re-investigate the case and introduce a pre-recorded video in which he asserted he regulations on anti-sexual misconduct. Sexual would never dismiss his lawyers under his own harassment aside, Chinese and international volition. This has raised suspicions that he has media have highlighted how women in China been acting under duress. There has also been are discriminated against in job applications. bad news for Tashi Wangchuk, a Tibetan activist Research conducted by Human Rights Watch who campaigned for Tibetan language education has found that almost 20 percent of civil and who has been detained since 2016, after service positions released in early 2018 either appearing in a New York Times video in which required job applicants to be male or expressed he discussed his campaign. At the end of May a preference for male candidates, whereas only he was sentenced to five years in jail for ‘inciting one job post indicated a preference for females. separatism’. TS It was also found that private companies— including tech giants Alibaba and Tencent—had (Sources: Amnesty International; China opened up special positions for ‘beautiful girls’, Change; The Guardian 1; The Guardian 2; Radio so-called ‘goddesses’, hired to lure more male Free Asia 1; Radio Free Asia 2; Radio Free Asia applicants.

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