Brad’s Reviews > Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour > Status Update
Brad
is on page 309 of 880
"Work in China's coalmines continued to be extremely perilous into the early twenty-first century, though from around 2003, China started to dramatically improve its record, by 2019 reducing the recorded death rate to 2 percent of what it had been in the early 2000s."
The difference? Neither market reform nor change of Party, but leveraging of state capacity to shift from productivism to substantive safety measures.
— May 25, 2025 11:02AM
The difference? Neither market reform nor change of Party, but leveraging of state capacity to shift from productivism to substantive safety measures.
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Brad’s Previous Updates
Brad
is on page 700 of 880
"During the summer of 2018, Jasic workers, prodded by underground Maoist activists, mobilized to demand, among other concessions, the right to estabish their own workplace union--a request that was met with harsh, coordinated repression by the employer and the local government, which [triggered] expressions of solidarity from groups of Marxist students all over the country."
— Jun 02, 2025 09:29PM
Brad
is on page 623 of 880
"Some overseas chambers of commerce were strongly opposed to legislation on collective negotiation...As a consequence, both the Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises and the Shenzhen Collective Consultation Ordinance were suspended."
Foreign capital blocks Chinese workers' path to democratic organizing---and the lack of that is used as a pretext for foreign governments' moralizing about democracy.
— May 31, 2025 09:51AM
Foreign capital blocks Chinese workers' path to democratic organizing---and the lack of that is used as a pretext for foreign governments' moralizing about democracy.
Brad
is on page 567 of 880
"In March [2003], a young graphic designer named Sun Zhigang was stopped by police on a street in Guangzhou...Since he did not have his [ID] and residence permit with him, the police officers suspected him of being an illegal immigrant...The following day, he was transferred to a Custody and Repatriation Centre, where [he] died, allegedly of heart failure...Public uproar [led] to the abolition of C&R centres."
— May 30, 2025 12:35PM
Brad
is on page 534 of 880
"In smothering the rights-based work of labour NGOs, the Xi period also brought to a halt any innovation in approaches to resolving workers' grievances."
Jude Howell's essay on "Labour NGOs in China" dodges the question of *whose geopolitical interests* 'rights-based foreign NGOs' might represent. This doesn't mean they're all CIA fronts, but what kind of NGOs are emboldened by WTO entry? Nuance is underrated.
— May 29, 2025 11:40AM
Jude Howell's essay on "Labour NGOs in China" dodges the question of *whose geopolitical interests* 'rights-based foreign NGOs' might represent. This doesn't mean they're all CIA fronts, but what kind of NGOs are emboldened by WTO entry? Nuance is underrated.
Brad
is on page 505 of 880
"Whereas the economic reforms of the 1990s greatly benefited intellectuals and students, they almost completely destroyed the urban working class. As the majority of state-owned enterprises were restructured, downsized, and privatized, workers...faced much worse working conditions...The power and radicalism of urban workers...alarmed the party leaders and made them determined to break down the urban working class."
— May 28, 2025 09:13PM
Brad
is on page 463 of 880
"Since the fields were still owned collectively by all of the production team's households, they were able to recalibrate use rights over time. Starting in the 1980s and into the 2000s...every half decade or so they met as a group to readjust the team's fields...to recreate an equal per capita possession. The national government opposed these land readjustments...But the farmers ignored these official directives."
— May 27, 2025 10:20PM
Brad
is on page 420 of 880
"The Tan-Zam railway's lasting legacy as a monument to both the friendship between China and Tanzania and the international aspirations of the CCP has been recoded in the discourses...China's post-Mao marketization has abandoned the Maoist imperative of world socialism via interest-free development, in pursuit of profit-driven resource acquisition for China's benefit."
— May 27, 2025 12:23PM
Brad
is on page 405 of 880
"Socialism was not a 'secure' society that would automatically lead to communism. Accordingly, the only chance to actually accomplish the transition to communism was to maintain an open space for political experimentation and for the direct participation of workers in the management of production and also in the educational field."
— May 26, 2025 05:53PM
Brad
is on page 342 of 880
"In [the Dazhai system], all of a production team's members sat in judgment of one another at periodic team meetings...to award work-points based not on what a team member had physically accomplished, but rather on his or her attitude and effort. Initially, this worked well. But...members [loudly defended] their own work and took umbrage if awarded lower points."
On incentives see Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards".
— May 25, 2025 01:36PM
On incentives see Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards".
Brad
is on page 261 of 880
"Despite initially rough conditions of material scarcity, most Chinese workers and their families interviewed...fondly recalled their lives in Mongolia. Worker diplomacy was beginning to bear fruit. However, the workers on both sides were not immune to the enveloping political context."
- *The Short-Lived Eternity of Friendship: Chinese Workers in Socialist Mongolia (1955-1964)
Another tragic lost opportunity.
— May 23, 2025 10:14AM
- *The Short-Lived Eternity of Friendship: Chinese Workers in Socialist Mongolia (1955-1964)
Another tragic lost opportunity.
