Ching Kwan Lee

Ching Kwan Lee is professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (2007).

July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3

China Since Tiananmen: The Labor Movement

The twenty years since 1989 have brought two major developments in worker activism. First, whereas workers were part of the mass uprising in the Tiananmen Movement, there is today hardly any sign of mobilization that transcends class or regional lines. Second, a long-term decline in worker power at the point of production is going on…