Dog Days Introduction

DOG DAYS INTRODUCTION As Homer’s words at the beginning of this Dog Days introduction make abundantly clear, Sirius has an ominous reputation. Since ancient times, Roman and Greeks linked the star with the hottest days of the year. They even coined an expression—‘dog days’—to indicate that span of Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky time in the summer of the northern hemisphere On summer nights, star of stars, when Sirius rose in conjunction with the sun. Orion’s Dog they call it, brightest Those were inauspicious days, characterised Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat by heat, spells of dryness, thunderstorms, and And fevers to suffering humanity a sudden loss of energy and industriousness, if not outright madness. Curiously, it was in the Homer, The Iliad middle of the long, hot, and feverish dog days of the summer of 2018 that some workers at Shenzhen Jasic Technology took their chances ccording to the Chinese zodiac, and attempted to form an independent union to 2018 was the year of the ‘earthly challenge their employer. This brave action did Adog’. Legends about dogs abound not take long to provoke a coordinated response in Chinese mythology, but the most famous from the company and the local government, one undoubtedly is that of the ‘heavenly dog’ with the workers quickly being terminated, (tiangou). As the story goes, after divine archer beaten, and detained. The fever did not break Hou Yi shot down the nine suns that had there, however, as the governmental immune simultaneously risen up in the sky, the Queen response continued, triggered by solidarity Mother of the West decided to reward him groups springing up both inside and outside the with the elixir of immortality. Unfortunately country in support of the arrested workers and for him, his wife Chang’e—who, depending on their struggle. Of particular embarrassment for whom you listen to, was either a selfish woman the Chinese authorities was the participation willing to sacrifice her marriage to preserve of Maoist and Marxist student groups in the her youth or simply very disgruntled with her protests, with many travelling to Shenzhen husband—beat him to the holy beverage and, from around China to join the workers. In late with her body growing lighter and lighter as an August over 50 activists were arrested in effect of the magic potion, flew away towards both Shenzhen and Beijing. This incident is the moon. Here enters the dog, a big black emblematic of China’s contemporary situation, hound that Hou Yi was rearing. Seeing the wife with any challenge to the status quo being of his master floating away, the dog lapped immediately and severely suppressed. what was left of the elixir and started giving China’s year of the dog was also imbued chase, his body growing in size all the while. with the spirit of another canine, Cerberus— Hiding on the moon did not save Chang’e, as the three-headed hound of Hades—with the the giant mutt swallowed the celestial object ravenous advance of the surveillance state whole, with her on it. It took the intervention and the increasing securitisation of Chinese of the Queen Mother of the West to tame the society. Over the past several months the dog and force him to spit out both the moon Chinese government has rapidly ramped up its and the Chang’e. Instead of being punished, the acquisition and development of surveillance gigantic animal was pressed into service as the technology, deploying facial recognition guard dog at the gates of the heavens. cameras across the country and moving to Some identify the heavenly dog with integrate the huge amounts of data being a particular star—Sirius, which in Chinese is collected through online activity into new tianlangxing, or ‘star of the heavenly wolf’. modes of predictive algorithmic governance. 8 MADE IN CHINA YEARBOOK 2018 INTRODUCTION Nowhere is this large-scale experiment in and public debate as the engine of the new social control more evident than Xinjiang, wave of worker struggle. Far from the optimism where the authorities have detained perhaps of those years, today the effects of economic more than one million Uyghur and other ethnic slowdown and the tightening of controls on minority citizens in vast ‘reeducation camps’, civil society have thrown China’s workers into resulting in family separations, forced labour, a state of uncertainty and disorientation, and and the destruction of lives on a mass scale. the Chinese labour movement has once again While the Chinese government was able to found itself at an impasse. quickly build their mass detention apparatus This section offers a series of essays that aim with little attention from the international at assessing and understanding the current community, there have since been herculean conjuncture. In ‘Changes and Continuity’, efforts to bring to light the logistics of what Chris King-Chi Chan offers a retrospective of is going on and the devastating toll it is taking the development of industrial relations in China on people’s lives. While the government now over the past four decades. In ‘China’s Labour admits to the existence of the camps, there Movement in Transition’, Geoffrey Crothall is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge them draws from China Labour Bulletin’s impressive for what they really are. At the same time, trove of data to analyse the latest trends in there have been incidents around the globe of Chinese labour unrest. In ‘Gongyou, the New Chinese citizens threatening and attempting Dangerous Class in China?’, Yu Chunsen looks to silence those speaking out about what is into the discourses that Chinese migrant happening in public forums. workers use to define their shared identity, probing the possibility of them becoming the foundation of a new class consciousness. Anybody Out There? In ‘Reconfiguring Supply Chains’, Nellie Chu shows how infrastructure projects that link China’s interior and coastal manufacturing In this Yearbook, we follow the events of 2018 regions have intensified key aspects of the through the essays that appeared throughout country’s informal economy. In ‘The Struggles the year in the Made in China Journal. We of Temporary Agency Workers in Xi’s China’, have regrouped the essays into seven thematic Zhang Lu tracks the activism of dispatch sections. The first—entitled ‘Anybody Out workers in Chinese auto factories, examining There?’—examines the current predicament of the potential for this group to successfully the Chinese labour movement. Labour activism bargain for their rights. In ‘Robot Threat has undergone significant transformation in or Robot Dividend?’, Huang Yu considers China over the last decade. Between the mid- the possible consequences of automation 2000s and mid-2010s, an increase in labour and robotisation on employment and labour protests seemed to herald a growing and more activism in China. In ‘A Pessoptimistic View of self-confident labour movement. A series of Chinese Labour NGOs’, Ivan Franceschini and high-profile collective actions that took place Kevin Lin revisit the debate on labour NGOs in in 2010—in particular a strike at a Honda China, offering their own reading of the current auto parts factory in Foshan in 2010—sparked situation. Finally, in ‘The Jasic Strike and the a renewed optimism, during which the public Future of the Chinese Labour Movement’ and debate on Chinese labour came to be dominated ‘The Jasic Mobilisation: A High Tide for the by the idea of China’s workers ‘awakening’ and Chinese Labour Movement?’, Zhang Yueran taking their fate into their own hands. This and Au Loong Yu provide insights into the new narrative was largely focussed on the so- struggle of the Jasic workers mentioned at the called ‘new generation of migrant workers’, beginning of this introduction. presented in much of the academic literature MADE IN CHINA YEARBOOK 2018 9 INTRODUCTION To the Soil Proletarianisation’, Thomas Sætre Jakobsen bemoans the fact that China labour studies’ bias towards urban contexts is neglecting the In December 2018, the Chinese authorities reality of hundreds of millions of workers who commemorated the 40th anniversary of China’s live between the farmlands in the countryside reform and opening up, an event generally and the workplaces of the city. In ‘Inside Work’, hailed as the beginning of the country’s rise Tamara Jacka shows how the development as a global economic and political power. trajectory of modern China has been The unprecedented economic growth and underpinned and enabled by the exploitation transformation of these four decades has been of the ‘inside work’ of rural women. In ‘Rural rooted in a fundamental restructuring of local Transformations and Urbanisation’, Marina society. Contemporary China has changed Svensson describes her experience at the Third from a largely agrarian society predominantly Ningbo International Photography Week, inhabited by peasants, to a rapidly urbanising which this year focussed on documenting rural one, characterised by a floating populace transformations and processes of urbanisation. moving back and forth between rural and urban Finally, in ‘Domestic Archaeology’, Daniele spaces, which are in a continuous state of flux. Dainelli presents a photographic project on the Going hand in hand with China’s ascent into Chinese countryside that took him seven years modernity is the subordination of rural areas to complete. and people. While rural China has historically been a site of extraction and exploitation, in the post-reform period this has intensified, On a Chinese Screen and rurality itself has become a problem, best typified through the ubiquitous propaganda about the need to revitalise the countryside, The third section—‘On a Chinese Screen’— and ongoing attempts to reconstruct rural looks into the role of the media in relation areas in a new image.

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