China from Below: Critical Analysis & Grassroots Activism (edited by Ralf Ruckus, Kevin Lin, Jule Pfeffer, and Daniel Reineke) brings together activists and researchers with a critical, left-wing perspective to analyze China’s current role in the world as well as the social conflicts and mobilizations in the country.
The book is based on a series of webinars held in 2020 and 2021 under the title “China and the Left—Critical Analysis and Grassroots Activism” and co-sponsored by gongchao.org, positions politics, Made in China Journal, and Critical China Scholars.
The contributions in this edited volume cover key issues necessary for “rethinking” China in the 21st century, including China’s feminist movement, tech worker organizing, environmental politics, state repression in Xinjiang, the Left in Taiwan, right-wing factions in Hong Kong, Chinese investments and labor struggles in Indonesia, and a reevaluation of China’s history since 1949 and the contested reform process.
Free PDF copies available:
- English: https://www.gongchao.org/en/china-from-below/
- Chinese: https://www.gongchao.org/cn/diguan-zhongguo/
- German: https://www.gongchao.org/de/china-von-unten/
Table of Contents
Preface / The Editors
I. Current Contradictions
1 | Dong Yige: Gender Awakening, Care Crisis, and Made-in-China Feminism
2 | JS Tan: Tech Workers and Rising Class Consciousness in China
3 | Richard Smith: China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse
II. Workers’ Struggles and Racism Following the Covid-19 Pandemic
4 | Eli Friedman, Wen, and Pan: Labor Struggles During and After the Pandemic
5 | Gigi Mei, Kimiko Suda, Shan Windscript, and JM Wong: Confronting Covid-19 Racism. Asian Diaspora Organizing and Transnational Solidarity
III. China’s Periphery
6 | Darren Byler: Terror Capitalism: The Enclosure of Uyghurs in Northwest China
7 | Brian Hioe: Taiwan’s Left in the Era of Chinese-American Rivalry
8 | Promise Li: Facing the Right in the Hong Kong Movement
IV. China in the World and the History of Chinese Socialism
9 | Alfian Al-Ayubby and Y. Wasi Gede Puraka: Chinese Investments and Labor Struggles in Indonesia
10 | Isabella Weber: How China Escaped Shock Therapy. The Market Reform Debate
11 | Ralf Ruckus: The Communist Road to Capitalism in China
Afterword: Reflections on Positionality, Representation, and Practical Solidarity