This week, Kaiser chats with Manfred Elfstrom, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Manfred’s new book, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness, examines the state’s dynamic approach to handling labor actions — petitions, protests, strikes, and the like — and how it has blended compromise and coercion to address the demands of workers. The book makes an important contribution to a growing body of literature that seeks a deeper understanding of authoritarian governance in China and more generally among autocratic regimes.
3:27 – How the book’s argument fits into the broader literature on authoritarian governance
9:32 – The book’s geographic focus: The Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta
22:12 – Repression and responsiveness
32:39 – Why repression and responsiveness undercut one another
43:58 – The bureaucratic incentive to handle labor unrest well
50:28 – Labor issues, common prosperity, and the “Red New Deal”
55:58 – The Jasic protests and the crackdown on the Peking University Marxist study group
A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com
Recommendations:
Manfred: Elizabeth Perry’s book Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition; and James Green’s The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and their Battle for Freedom.
Kaiser: The Ezra Klein Show, and particularly the episode featuring Adam Tooze, “Economics Needs to Reckon with What it Doesn’t Know.”
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
China and the American "great power opportunity," with Ali Wyne
Another Taiwan Straits Crisis? CIA veteran John Culver weighs in
The Sinica Network presents the Café & Seda (Coffee & Silk) Podcast
Prototype Nation: Silvia Lindtner on what drives Chinese tech innovation, and how tech drives Chinese statecraft
Semiconductors and the unspoken U.S. tech policy on China, with Paul Triolo
Historian Andrew Liu on COVID origins: Orientalism and the "Asiatic racial form"
Yale's Jing Tsu on the characters who modernized Chinese characters
Taiwan: Saber rattling, salami slicing, and strategic ambiguity, with Shelley Rigger and Simona Grano
A Comprehensive Mirror: James Carter's "This Week in China's History" column marks two years
Mental health under lockdown: A clinical psychologist in Shanghai
Covering the U.S.-China relations beat with the FT's Demetri Sevastopulo
Too much of a good thing? Connectivity and the age of "unpeace," with the ECFR's Mark Leonard
The rise and fall of U.S.-China scientific collaboration, with Deborah Seligsohn
Chinese public opinion on the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Yawei Liu and Danielle Goldfarb
China and India share a contested border and an uncomfortable neutrality in the Ukraine War — but not much else
China, Europe, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, with Marina Rudyak
Inside the Shanghai lockdown, with SupChina's own Chang Che
After the War: Scenarios China faces when the Russo-Ukrainian War eventually ends
Susan Thornton on the urgent need for diplomacy with China over the Russo-Ukraine War
Chinese international relations scholar Dingding Chen on Beijing's position in the Russo-Ukrainian War
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free