Chinese Factory Workers Talk About Labor Struggles at Home

The new book China on Strike is based on dozens of interviews with workers in Pearl River Delta factories, an industrial region of region of 60 million people that has become the "workshop of the world," as China has become the fastest growing major economy in the world over the last three decades. Pearl River Delta factories supply the world's most profitable corporations, like Apple, Nike, Hewlett Packard, and many others. These interviews document the processes of internal migration in China, changing employment relations, worker culture, and other issues related to China’s explosive growth. China on Strike is the first English-language book to provide an intimate and revealing window into the lives of workers as they organize against low pay and brutal working conditions, launching the world' largest strike wave in the 21st century. Two of these contributors will be in attendance and will speak and answer questions via interpreter Alex T. Tom.

"As these vivid case-studies illustrate, the real sleeping dragon—China’s enormous factory proletariat—is wide awake and fighting back on all fronts. Indeed, here is first-hand evidence that Chairman Xi Jinping may soon confront the largest labor rebellion in history."
—Mike Davis, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Riverside, and author of Planet of Slums

Fang Gang has worked in factories since he graduated from university, conducting interviews with other workers about their collective struggles in the Pearl River Delta and compiling them into articles that are published and distributed. An example is his 2013 piece "Strikes over the relocation of factories." Currently, Fan Gang assists with workers taking collective action in the Pearl River Delta.

Mi Tu has been engaged in doing translations of literature on workers' struggles in other countries, as well as researching the conditions of workers in China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs), since her university days. Since graduating, Mi has worked in factories, interviewed workers engaged in struggles in the Pearl River Delta, and compiled and circulated these oral histories. Mi currently assists workers taking collective action against occupational diseases.

Alex T. Tom (interpreter) is the Executive Director of San Francisco's Chinese Progressive Association.

Admission is free.