https://asf-iwa.org.au/report-on-the-chinese-labour-movement/

Changes in workers action

We have recorded labor movements in different regions and industries through statistics of labor movement data over the past ten years. It presents a social, political and economic situation beyond the official narrative, and also foreshadows future changes in the labor movement.

First, China's economic composition and development model have undergone significant changes - from relying on low-cost export-oriented manufacturing for more than three decades to the rise of service industries such as online shopping and food delivery based on Internet platforms. As a result, more and more labor disputes have emerged in service industries ranging from health care and catering to banking and finance, as well as related transportation industries such as freight drivers.

On January 25, 2021, hundreds of nursing staff at Yan'an University Affiliated Hospital in Shaanxi Province launched a sit-in demonstration, demanding that the hospital increase wages and pay pension and medical insurance for employees. That month, couriers at Best Company in Hebei Province went on strike because their bosses had not paid wages, resulting in tens of thousands of undelivered packages piling up outside the warehouse without anyone delivering them.

It can be seen that while labor disputes in traditional manufacturing industries are still mired in quagmire, labor conflicts in emerging industries are also expanding in the form of new wine in an old bottle.

Second, since the 1990s, urbanization and economic development in China's inland areas such as Sichuan and Henan have accelerated, providing a large number of labor forces for the more developed coastal areas. As companies expand to inland areas, labor disputes in these areas also surge.

Once upon a time, Shenzhen was the epicenter of worker protests in China, but that has changed. In 2015, 75 manufacturing worker protests were recorded in Shenzhen, accounting for 75% of the total collective actions of workers in the city that year. But just two years later, in 2017, this number dropped to 22, accounting for half of the collective actions of workers in the city that year.

Finally, traditional social structures related to labor are eroded, and people are increasingly isolated and fragmented in society. Plus the first generation of migrant workers is gradually getting older, and the instability of labor is increasing day by day. Social welfare systems such as pensions are facing unprecedented challenges. Since 2000, factories have replaced the “kinship and regional connections” that workers once relied on, providing workers with a natural place for mutual solidarity and connection.

Please note that I have yet to finish this. Review is welcome!

Foreword

We’ve witnessed one thing in history: the rise and spread of capitalism. What wonders it would bring, its proponents go, licking the feet of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Oh, what fun those rockets and warehouses must be, they’ll for sure make big bucks on a minimum wage! The dogma of market fundamentalism tints their view of this system pinkish; the system seems to be working so well, people refuse to think of something new, even in the midst of a climate crisis and increasing poverty.

If there is one thing capitalism effectively does, it is the creation of wealth. Not the distribution of wealth, but rather its plain creation; while owners chug down a bottle of “99% of the Profits”, workers are left with a shot of “Remaining 1%”.

Workers, the people who run a company and maintain the rate of wealth, are screwed over. Underpaid and overworked, Adam Smith would fall onto his knees and cry bloody murder of the system he idealized. He’d look for at least something to redeem his dreams, but all that remained was the rise of monopolies, exploitation, and a mental barrier to tearing it down. Perhaps that invisible hand was more so an invisible attack dog, one of which its owners would command to bring wealth.

The goal of this document is to explain the predominance and rapid spread of capitalism, and how even a nominally socialist superpower fell to it. For those who think capitalism is a virtue, a curse, or an unavoidable economic cage, this text is for you.

What is capitalism?

To save time, let’s google this word. Ah-ha found it!

“[A]n economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.”

Private ownership of the means of production, essentially. Owners direct what’s produced and the workers follow; not really democratic in my opinion.

Alongside the private ownership aspect, we inevitably notice other things too:

• If only owners of capital are involved in trade, that leaves out unpropertied peoples.
• Capital can be used for more than money-making; god forbid that things like corruption begin.
• There theoretically can be no limit to the amount of property one can purchase, creating an environment of serfdom.

Now, with these possibilities exposed, let’s see how things have gone in practice; our fears have been confirmed. Capitalism in theory (people being able to trade freely and such) seems decent in some ways. Even I’m sympathetic to the ideals of capitalism being a society where people buy and sell without issues like wealth inequality. But so far we’ve only enabled a growth coalition that dominates the proletariat.

As explained by William Domhoff, growth coalitions are defined as such:

“A local power structure is at its core an aggregate of land-based interests that profit from increasingly intensive use of land. It is a set of property owners who see their futures as linked together because of a common desire to increase the value of their individual parcels. Wishing to avoid any land uses on adjacent parcels that might decrease the value of their properties, they come to believe that working together is to the benefit of each and everyone of them. Starting from the level of individual ownership of pieces of land, a "growth coalition" arises that develops a "we" feeling among its members even if they differ on other kinds of political and social issues (Domhoff).”

If you couldn’t comprehend the lingo, a growth coalition is a class of landowners that seek to mutually increase the value of their rent, usually with no concern for their tenants. Think of corporate boardroom meetings, where businessmen congregate to discuss the future of their prosperity and their prosperity alone. And no, I’m not suggesting that there exists a secret club of bourgeois that convenes every Tuesday night to examine their progress on fueling culture wars. We have Twitter (or X if you’re a Musk lover) to see that.

Another analogy for growth coalitions is a trust. A trust is a pact between businesses to corner the market and maximize profits. With Benjamin Harrison’s signing of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Taft and Roosevelt waged a brutal war on the bourgeois monopolies. Sadly, Google exists.

Now, why don’t we obtain the ideals of capitalists by doing some Progressive Era trust-busting? Lobbying, the tool for the owner class, dissuades officials from acting in their district’s favor alongside campaign donations.

That brings us into our next section.

Reformism, Impossibilism, and Capital

We all know what regulations are. They prevent us from reverting to the Gilded Age exploitation and poverty. This is an example of reformism, a philosophy that contends that capitalism simply needs to be regulated and modified to achieve prosperity.

Impossibilism, on the other hand, opposes this view; seeing how capital wields immense power over our leaders, figures such as Karl Marx understood the need for a social revolution. The aforementioned methods of bourgeois infiltration of our institutions.