Description

Category:HistoryAsianChina & Fareast History-Cfh
Publisher: Verso Press | ISBN: 9781839766336 | Pages: 720

In 2021, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated a century of existence. Since the Party’s humble beginnings in the Marxist groups of the Republican era to its current global ambitions, one thing has not changed for China’s leaders: their claim to represent the vanguard of the Chinese working class. Spanning from the night classes for workers organised by student activists in Beijing in the 1910s to the labour struggles during the 1920s and 1930s; from the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution to the social convulsions of the reform era to China’s global push today, this book reconstructs the contentious history of labour in China from the early twentieth century to this day (and beyond). This will be achieved through a series of essays penned by scholars in the field of Chinese society, politics, and culture, each one of which will revolve around a specific historical event, in a mosaic of different voices, perspectives, and interpretations of what constituted the experience of being a worker in China in the past century.

About the Author

Ivan Franceschini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University. He has published several books related to China. With Tommaso Facchin, he co-directed the documentaries Dreamwork China (2011) and Boramey: Ghosts in the Factory (2021). He founded and co-edits the Made in China Journal. His latest book is the co-edited volume Afterlives of Chinese Communism. Christian Sorace is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Colorado College. He is the author of Shaken Authority, and the co-editor of Afterlives of Chinese Communism. His current research focuses on the crisis of democracy, air pollution, and urbanisation in Mongolia.