
English: 
This is David Harvey and you're listening
to the Anti-Capitalist Chronicles a podcast
that looks at capitalism through a Marxist
lens.
This podcast is made possible by Democracy
at Work.
Let us look at the labor question because
this is a question for capital but I think
from the standpoint of any anti-capitalist
politics we have to think about exactly what's
happening within the sphere of labor in China.
In 1978 when Deng Xiaoping launched the transformation,
the labor situation was roughly as follows:

Chinese: 
大卫-哈维叙述反资本主义编年史
以马克思视角看资本主义
“岗位民主”组织赞助播出
让我们审视下劳工的问题。这问题对资本很重要。
从反资本主义政治立场上我们得弄清楚
这问题在中国又怎样展现呢？
在1978年邓小平开始改开时，劳工情况是这样的：

English: 
China had industrialized largely under Soviet
influence after the revolution and industrial
organization involved the creation of what
might be called a working-class focused on
heavy industry [such as] steel 
and transportation.
The organization was not what might be called
horizontal in the sense that all workers were
together.
It was more localized in work units in particular
plants.
For example, you have a steel plant and there
would be work units in the steel plant and

Chinese: 
中国已经工业化，而且大致是苏联模式的。
建立的可谓是工人阶级组织和重工业体系
如钢铁和交通等产业部门。
但其组织形式并不是横向的工人联合
集体
而是各自为政存在于部门化了的单位厂所
比如钢铁部门有钢铁工人新村

English: 
the workers in that work unit would be living
under circumstances, which are fairly secure
in terms of their own employment.
There would be housing attached to it, education
services and the like.
So you had, in effect, what might be called
a socialist working class working in the state-owned
enterprises.
The state-owned enterprises were connected
to regional economies and it was a centrally
planned structure, in a classic kind of Soviet
sense, that different enterprises had different
production targets and this was worked through
in this way.
But, that was an urbanized working class,
let's call it a socialist working class.
It was embedded in that centrally planned
economic system but the mass of the population

Chinese: 
各个部门工人新村里的工人在各自的生活条件下
工作就业是有保障的
住房，教育等其它服务都包括在内。
所以你可以说他们是社会主义工人阶级为国有
企业工作
国有企业和地方经济是有联系的。绝对是
一种典型的苏联式计划经济结构。
各企业生产不同的目标产品和指标。
但这些社会主义的工人阶级都是在城市
植根于计划经济体制中， 而中国的绝大多数的人口

English: 
was living on the land.
This was a population that had a very difficult
time reproducing itself adequately.
The tendency in the Mao era was to go for
communal agricultural systems and so the agricultural
system was organized on a commune basis and
it was not very successful.
During the Mao period, there were all these
attempts to find different ways to increase
rural productivity, which were not terribly
successful.
One of the things that happened almost fortuitously
in 1978 was that China was living under conditions
of very marginal capacity for food production.

Chinese: 
仍旧生活在农村
所以工人阶级的自我再造数量能力不足。
而毛时期倾向于农业公社化体系政策
但也是不太成功
毛时期的这两种工农业尝试都旨在提高产能
但都不很成功。
到1978年出现了偶发事件。当时中国还处在
粮食生产不足的临界状态

Chinese: 
高度集权体制下出现了去中心化势头
一些地方的人们开始反映
公社化行不通
他们想推翻这种农村组织结构
开始了所谓的联产承包责任制
其实就是农业生产劳动私有化
你不得不赞赏中央常委的灵活性
他们看到在农村生产地下的地方
农民摒弃了公社搞联产承包制
产量大增
所以他们就决定要推广联产承包制

English: 
Again, this comes back to the decentralized
character of the centralized state apparatus
that in a certain part of China a group of
people got together and said basically the
communal system wasn't working.
They wanted to revolt against it and they
started to organize agriculture on the basis
of what was called a household responsibility.
That is, you individualized the labor process.
Again, this is where you have to appreciate
the nature of the adaptability of the Central
Committee who looked at the situation saying:
Agricultural productivity is very low in this
place, these people went off and started using
a household responsibility system and productivity
increased dramatically.
So, we’ll basically adopt a household responsibility
system.

Chinese: 
所以1978年，公社解散，联产承包制
取而代之。
农业产能迅猛增长。可以说这是种农村革命。
但到1984年的数据显示，生产力的提高也为其自身造成问题。
就是农村劳动力过剩。
引进国有企业竞争也马上出现问题
就是生产效益和经济的运作如何契合

English: 
In 1978, a lot of the communes got dissolved
and displaced by a household responsibility
system.
Agricultural productivity soared upwards and
this was a revolution on the land.
But then most of the data suggest that by
1984 the rise in productivity had shot itself
out and after that, there was going to be
serious problems of employment on the land.
Introducing competition in the state-owned
enterprises immediately put them up against
the wall in terms of how productive they were
and how the economy was going to be worked.

Chinese: 
而实际上发生的是国有企业里的职工
发觉自己的企业正遭受破产的威胁
或者通过一系列的运作转变成了资本主义式的公司
而他们也成了普通雇员。原先的单位组织被解散
这就是所谓的打破“铁饭碗”。
这些人口的安全保障没有了。
从此他们发觉自己随着时间推移越来越
没有地位
我认为有意思的是，同时期的欧美
主要的白人工会工人阶级

English: 
What in effect happened was that the privileged
socialist workers in the state-owned enterprises
found themselves more and more under threat
as the state-owned enterprises went bankrupt
or in a whole series of reorganizations were
transformed into the equivalent of more capitalist
style corporations that simply hired in workers
and dissolved the work unit and therefore
smashed what was called the “iron rice bowl,”
which was the security apparatus that supported
the lives of this population.
So, the employees in the state-owned enterprises
found themselves less and less privileged
over time.
I think it's kind of interesting to note that
this was the same period when privileged,
mainly white, unionized working classes in
the United States and the equivalent in Europe

Chinese: 
也感受到对工会力量去中心化的打击
使工会成员权益受损。
工人也在遭受同样的去中心化冲击
只是中国的更为彻底。
这些现象还没被完全认知和理解。
这些被肢解的企业多数都在中国北方城市
就像底特律的故事一样，工人下岗
没有再就业。
造成了许多社会动荡
不少企业职工有不同程度的闹事

English: 
found themselves under pressure from deindustrialization
and from attacks upon trade union power and
attacks upon the privileges of that sector
of the working class.
In exactly the same way that a working class
found itself suffering from deindustrialization,
you actually get a whole wave of deindustrialization
in China.
This is again something that is not appreciated.
Most of these industries were located in the
north and there are tales of deindustrialized
cities [that] look like Detroit where these
privileged workers are laid off, they have
no alternative employment.
There was a lot of unrest.
There was revolt to some degree against what
was happening to the state-owned enterprises

Chinese: 
但他们很快被边缘化了。
而南方沿海地区的情况正好相反。
乡镇企业蓬勃发展
事实上去公社化提升了农业产能
造成了原始资本积累
并被用来成立小企业
正是在80年代这一阶段，中国经济开始对外开放
引进了外资企业

English: 
so they were being pushed to one side.
In the south of China on the other hand, and
in the coastal regions also, what you started
to find was the emergence of township and
village enterprises.
In fact, what happened with the dissolution
of the communes and the rising agricultural
productivity was that there was surplus capital
on the land and a surplus capital started
to be used to create small enterprises.
It was at this moment, [in the] 1980s, where
the economy of China was opened up to foreign
influences, allowing foreign companies to
come in.

Chinese: 
允许外资直接注资
在80年代成为可能。
但第一波外资其实并非纯粹外资
多数都来自港台地区
然后是泛亚地区的资本比如韩资，日资
显然，经验丰富的港资企业家敏锐察觉到
中国南方分变化，视廉价农民人口
可动员成移民劳工而被就业
于是大批香港企业大批内迁至广东
深圳珠三角地区。

English: 
Here is again an interesting story that foreign
direct investment into China started to emerge
in the 1980s as a possibility.
But, in the first instance it was just not
any foreign direct investment it was particularly
direct investment from Taiwan, Hong Kong and
to some degree also as time went on foreign
direct investment from other Asiatic companies
like South Korea Japan and the like.
Obviously, Hong Kong entrepreneurs who had
built the Hong Kong economy along capitalistic
lines then looked at what was going on in
South China as a free, low-income peasant
population that could be mobilized as a migrant
labor force into the production so they took
a lot of their production in Hong Kong and
relocated it into Guangdong and Pearl River
Delta and Shenzhen and the like.

English: 
The same thing happened with Taiwanese capital,
which started to flow into China very quickly.
What happened was that many of these industries
had a supply chain of some kind and so small
enterprises would come up and 
you start to get a complicated kind of network
of industrial structure emerging mainly in
the south.
The Chinese government facilitated that by
creating enterprise zones so they had about
five areas where anything was allowed but
it was kind of insulated from the rest of
society so you have this kind of control.
At that point, you start to see the formation
of a migrant labor force, which is being extracted

Chinese: 
同样的台资企业也开始大批迅速跟进
随之而来的是他们下游的产业链小微企业
应运而生，开始形成复杂工业生态网络
集中于南方。
中国政府开始促进经济特区建设
有5个特区有别于社会其他地区
这是他们的控制手段
从那时起，移民农工潮开始形成

Chinese: 
大批农民工剥离土地。
民工需要居住，于是推动了城镇化
这种民工潮成为一种另类劳工来源
有人叫他们宿舍劳工。
一般招工人员到农村偏远地区招收农工
带入城市
修建宿舍提供居住
农民工可能在宿舍里住上5、6年才返乡。
最典型的就是纺织业区的青年女工
16岁左右的女孩住在宿舍里为工厂打工

English: 
off the land.
The labor force needs somewhere to live, so
that [began] the push into urbanization and
the labor force also ends up creating an alternative
labor supply system, which might be called
the dormitory labor or something of that kind.
Typically, recruiters were going to rural
areas, would recruit a lot of laborers [and]
bring them in.
There would be dormitories constructed and
they lived in the dormitories.
They maybe would do that five or six years
and return back to the countryside.
This is particularly true for young women
in the textiles and areas is of that kind.
This would be the typical pattern that sixteen-year-old
girls would be brought in, living in the dormitories.

Chinese: 
到25岁离开返乡，结婚生子。
生子。
这股劳工洪流是巨大的，还要归功于
老毛时期的人口政策。
老毛时期饥荒的悲剧很多
但也不失有积极的一面。
比如，婴儿死亡率的锐减
结果就是到80年代大量的年轻人口
到了工作年龄需要事做

English: 
At age 25 they would leave and go back to
the countryside, get married and all the rest
of it.
Now, there was this huge supply of labor power
and this had a lot to do with what had happened
during the Mao period.
There were all these tragedies in [this] period,
famines and things like that.
But there were also some very positive things.
For instance, a dramatic decrease in infant
mortality.
The result was that by the time you get into
about the 1980s you have a huge wave of young
people who are coming into the labor force
and they need something to do.

English: 
The one-child policy had come in rather late
in that process.
In a sense, you have a demographic situation
in which this vast wave of a cohort of labor
is flooding into China and there has to be
some way to absorb it.
So, the labor absorption thing became very
significant in the 1980s and then it connected
also to labor absorption through urbanization
in the 1990s, which then as I've mentioned,
in 2007-2008 turned into further labor absorption
through urbanization.
So, you're absorbing all of this labor and
most of this is going on in the south of China
and the coastal regions of China in township
and village enterprises, some state-owned
enterprises but ultimately private capital
is also coming in and so you get an entrepreneurial

Chinese: 
而独生子女政策则是后期的事了。
所以中国的人口结构那时的现实是
一大波人潮需要消化
所以有了80年代的劳工潮，紧接着就是
90年代的城镇化潮流
一直到07、08年的大规模城镇化浪潮。
这些潮几乎都发生在南方
以及沿海地区。最终，这些乡镇企业，和一些国企
都成为了私人企业。形成

English: 
kind of capital.
This is a low-wage labor force, a migrant
labor force, which is precarious in the sense
that it does not have citizenship rights in
the cities.
This is the very peculiar thing because they're
a migrant force, they're not considered citizens
of the city.
They're considered as a migrant labor force
that will then go back to the land after it
has done its time working in the factories
so there is this very peculiar system set
up.
There's a very interesting work by C.K. Lee
who talks about the dual labor system that
emerged in China.
There was the northern labor system, which
was the socialist workers who had been laid

Chinese: 
私人企业主资本。
奇怪的一点是，这些廉价劳动力，民工潮
在城市里是没有公民权的。
他们不被认为是城市居民
 
他们被认为是打完工就该返乡的一族
真是个奇葩的设置。
 
C.K.Lee有关于中国劳工双轨制的有趣论述。
 
北方的体制下社会主义劳工正在下岗

Chinese: 
他们越来越不满和埋怨政治权益的坠落
而他们自认为才是社会主义的工人阶级
 
而南方农民工却不认为自己是工人
我很惊奇地发现这点
我记得一次在他们的社区中心演讲，
并把他们作为工人阶层对象
他们却说“不，我们不是工人阶级。
我们是打工仔，农民工而已
工人阶级才看不上我们呢。
工人阶级都是住在城里的特殊族群
我们在城市户口都没有。

English: 
off and we're essentially engaging in a politics
of discontent and mourning the loss of their
privileges and of their possibilities but
who considered themselves to be socialist
workers.
The migrants in the south did not consider
themselves to be workers.
I found this fascinating.
I remember giving a talk there in a social
action center and I started talking to people
as if they were of the working class and these
were migrant workers.
They all said: “no, we're not working class!
We're workers, we're migrants.
The working class has nothing to do with us.
The working class are those privileged people
who live in the cities.
We don't have permanent residency for the
cities.

Chinese: 
我们只是匆匆过客。“
这就是中国的劳工现状。
当体制开始健全后，一连串事情开始发生
首先是第一波民工进城时
根本没有自己的权利概念
典型的马克思所说的觉悟前工人阶级
实际上的原始劳动阶级。
对自身的阶级在社会上的位置属性毫无概念
也不认为自己是劳工阶级。
所以我对他们的说教毫无作用。
他们根本不理解我在说什么
完全是对牛弹琴。

English: 
We’re just sort of migrant laborers who
are passing through.”
This was the situation in the work process.
As this system matured, a number of things
started to happen.
The first thing was that the first wave of
migrants from rural areas came in and they
had absolutely no idea of their rights.
It was a classic case of what Marx would call
of a class in itself.
That is, it's actually the working class objectively.
But, it has no consciousness of its positionality
in society as being a working class and doesn't
think of itself as a working class.
So, when I talked to people in that situation
as if they were of the working class they
literally did not understand me and didn't
understand what I was talking about.
[They] thought I was talking about something
completely different.

Chinese: 
他们觉得我说的跟他们毫无关系
这个劳工阶层完全受地方政策制约。而地方政策完全是地方政府
地方领导制定的。
中央政府后来制定了些劳工法。 某种程度上还是
相当进步的。
问题是农民工完全不知道该法的存在
他们不知道合同权。
不知道合同条款是啥。
如果出事了他们就知道找政府权威机构
但没有合同他们也就没有了法律依靠。

English: 
They didn't think that I was talking about
anything to do with them.
This working class began to be regulated by
very local decisions made by local politicians
and local authorities.
A system emerged where the central state would
pass a labor law [that] was actually in some
respects fairly progressive.
But, the point was that none of the migrant
workers knew about the labor law.
They didn't know that they had a right of
contract.
They didn't know what that contractual situation
should be.
If something terrible happened, and they complained
to the authorities, if they didn't have a
contract, they had no grounds to litigate
at all.

Chinese: 
所以在这种奇葩的现实情况下，各种不好的事情发生在这群
没觉悟的劳工群体身上。正如
马克思语汇了所说的强制竞争法则作用。
当中国进入国际市场时，就必须服从于
强制竞争法则
规定了中国发展的唯一路径是
低工资，低端产业结构
 
这就是中国南方的产业萌生。
很快大量大型工厂的建立以及外资的涌入
我说过，第一批外资并非纯粹外资

English: 
So, you have this peculiar situation in which
an objective working class is there and all
kinds of awful things are happening to it
because [of], and here I would use the classic
Marxist phrase, the coercive laws of competition.
As soon as China inserted itself into the
world market it had to obey by the coercive
laws of competition.
The coercive laws of competition were such
as to say the only way in which China can
succeed in the world economy is through a
low-wage economic system and a low wage industrial
structure.
That is what emerged in South China.
Pretty soon you start to see these large factories
being set up, foreign capital is coming in.
As I've indicated, the first wave of that
foreign capital wasn't that foreign because

English: 
it was Taiwanese or from Hong Kong.
In a sense, those capitalist organizations,
which were coming in, saw China as a place
where they could actually engage in all kinds
of predatory practices, all kinds of exploitative
practices.
The coercive laws of competition were such
that they could utilize this low-wage labor
force in any way they wanted because it was
ignorant of its legal rights.
Local authorities were not going to intervene
and we're not going to do anything because
local authorities very often were rather corruptly
connected to these foreign firms coming in
and the local startups that were also becoming
integrated into this system.
So, the labor situation then, however, began
to change because after the first cohort of

Chinese: 
而是非港即台
他们之所以来中国
就是来进行各种残酷掠夺式剥削经营的。
 
他们可以为所欲为
毫无法律成本
地方政府不会干涉
反而是同流合污地一起腐败分羹
地方原始资本也是高度契合与此系统
然后劳工阶层情况也起变化。第一波劳工返乡

Chinese: 
他们开始忠告下一波民工
他们的工作状况条件和
可能的遭遇
下一批民工开始有维权意识
所以95年第一个劳工法之后，又有了07、08年的劳工大法。
也非常激进
中央政府开始关心维护社会和谐
开始立法维护工人权益
但是很多外企，
地方私企都习惯以野蛮剥削方式

English: 
workers went back into the countryside, they
started to alert people who were the next
cohort of workers coming in as to what kinds
of conditions they might encounter as they
got recruited into the factories.
They started to become more aware of their
contractual rights.
In 1995, there was this first labor law and
in 2007-2008 there was another big labor law,
which is actually very progressive.
The central government was really concerned
with the preservation of social harmony and
so it built a labor law, which was around
trying to protect the rights of workers against
the predatory practices that many of these
foreign firms that were coming in were engaging
in and many local entrepreneurs were engaging
in.

Chinese: 
即使有劳工法律
也没有执法能力和机构
但至少人们开始意识到有这样部劳工法的存在
知道他们有合同权
所以这部法与其是解决了问题，倒不如说是制造了社会不满情绪
 
有一些有趣的数据显示劳工心理
在PUn Ngai 写的关于农民工的书里
我来读读书里的官方数据
反映劳工阶层社会不满情绪的
 
1993到2005年

English: 
So, you have a labor situation of this kind
but there was no apparatus whereby this law
could be really fully implemented because
there was no apparatus.
But people started to become aware of the
fact that there was a law, they were aware
of the fact that they should have contractual
rights.
So actually, the law had an immense impact
on increasing discontent rather than resolving
discontent.
There's some very interesting data about the
state of mind.
This is a book by Pun Ngai about migrant labor
in China.
Let me read you some of the things because
the Chinese were keeping official statistics
on the levels of discontent that were occurring
within the labor systems that they had set
up.
“Official statistics,” I'm reading now
from Pun Ngai, “revealed that between 1993

English: 
and 2005 the number of mass protests had risen
nationwide from around 10,000 to 87,000, a
nearly 20 percent annual increase on average.
Also, the number of participants in these
protests had increased from 730,000 to more
than 3 million, and 75 percent of these protests
were initiated by workers and peasants.
It is observed that these protests have not
only increased in number but also in average
size, social scope, and degree of organization.
The upward trend continued from the first
ten years of the 2000s reflecting widespread
incidences of rights violations as the private
sector expanded.
Labor cases skyrocketed to 693,465 involving
more than 1.2 million laborers nationwide
during the economic crisis of 2008.”
That was the period when a lot of firms went
bankrupt and there was non-payment of wages.

Chinese: 
大规模群体事件从10000起增加到了87000起。
每年增长近20%
人数也从730000人增长到
300万人。75%的抗议事件都是工人和农民发起的。
不但抗议事件的次数，平均规模
社会影响，以及组织程度都在扩大
21世纪初十年在私企扩张中
有大规模的侵犯权益事件持续不断
全国范围劳资纠纷法律案件激增到693465起。 涉及120万工人
这是在2008年金融危机时期
这时期大批工厂倒闭，工资拖欠

English: 
“These were mainly disputes over wage and
insurance payments, illegal layoffs and inadequate
compensation payments.
Following the economic recovery,” after
2008 that is, “newly accepted arbitration
cases fell to 600,000 in 2010 and further
to 589,000 in 2011.
In recent years, governments at all levels
have directed workers to resolve conflicts
through workplace-based mediation and other
informal means, hence reducing arbitration
caseloads.
In 2012, however, labor dispute cases rebounded
to 640,000 showing deep tensions in industrial
relations despite greater intervention than
ever before from the government and its trade
union offices.”
This is largely going on through the migrant
populations in the south and coastal regions.

Chinese: 
”多数为工资争议，保险支付，合法解雇以及不足的
赔偿支付。 “
08年后复苏期，仲裁案从2010年的600000
起跌落到2011年的589000起
近年来，各级政府直接指导下的化解纠纷
和解减少了仲裁案数量
 
但2012劳资纠纷案又反弹至640000件。说明尽管有前所未有的政府和工会的干强势预
劳资关系仍旧深度紧张
 
这些主要在南方沿海地区农民工人口持续

Chinese: 
大量爆发不满的劳工运动
中国有组织的工会存在但那都是共产党领导的。
其实是党组织工会
基本上起着控制不满情绪的减压阀作用
他们不会挑战管理阶层，而是挑战工人的
维稳组织。
到了2007至2008年，大众开始有
维权和法律意识了
由于大量的不满情绪蔓延，人们开始相互串联
 
这就是毛最反感的劳动人口的横向
自组织意识。

English: 
This is a huge outpouring of discontent within
the labor movement.
China has organized trade unions but they’re
trade unions organized by the Communist Party;
so, they’re Party unions.
Essentially, the role of the union is to deal
with discontent and to keep the lid on discontent.
In other words, they're not about challenging
management; they're about challenging the
labor to try to keep the peace.
But what happened in this labor law 2007-2008
was people started to become very aware of
their contractual rights and therefore their
legal rights.
What then happened was that given this volume
of discontent is that people started to make
connections.
One of the things that Mao had not liked was
this idea of any horizontal organization of
working populations.

Chinese: 
去中心化必须把不满情绪控制在本地区范围内
所以中国从没有大规模的工潮运动。不然会
产生巨大的整体效应压力。
只有大量的不满情绪
另外，中国政府现在不再公布这些数据了
因为他们害怕出丑。
我们看到了一种转变的开始
就是马克思所说的觉悟的无产阶级
他们的阶级意识开始形成

English: 
In other words, the decentralization kept
discontent always bottled in local areas and
there was not a mass movement, which was a
mass Chinese labor movement of some kind,
which was going to actually exerts a collective
pressure.
What happened was that mass discontent.
By the way, the Chinese government no longer
produce these numbers because I think they're
becoming so astronomical that they find them
embarrassing.
What we're beginning to see is the possibility
that there is a transformation going on in
what might be called a class in itself to
what Marx called a class for itself.
That there is the emergence of a certain kind
of class consciousness.

English: 
The unions, the trade unions, which existed
were company unions, were Party organized
company unions.
There is now a movement pushing towards independent
unions, which are organized by the workers
themselves according to their own interests.
This is something obviously the party finds
threatening, very threatening.
One of the things that is important to recognize:
This goes back to the way in which the Chinese
still honor the tradition of Marx, Lenin,
Mao and the like because there are in the
educational process in China lengthy courses
on Marxism and Maoism and all the rest of
it.

Chinese: 
现存的工会只是企业的工会，党的工会而已
 
现在他们正努力推动成立独立的工会，工人的工会
为他们自己的利益服务
这才是共产党觉得很受威胁的地方。
有一点必须指出：中国至今仍旧
尊崇马、恩、列、斯、毛的
教育体系里仍旧有大篇幅的马列毛的课程
 

English: 
While many Western commentators tend to think
that these are jokes, it turns out that some
people take them seriously.
There is a revival of Maoist thinking amongst
students.
In exactly the same way that in Tiananmen
Square you had that kind of coming together
of a student movement and a worker movement
to challenge the authority of the party, so
there seems to be a movement along those lines
emerging again but now in a context where
the laborers themselves are much more conscious
of their conditions and their rights.
But, most people writing about this make a
very interesting point that the workers themselves
are not antagonistic to the Party.

Chinese: 
尽管外国学者都认为这些都是笑话
有人却是认真的
学生中出现了毛思想的复活
跟8964时期的自发的学生运动联合工人运动一样
反对当局的权威。
不同的是这次他们的
劳工权利意识增强了。
有趣的是但多数报道这些运动的人都指出
他们不反党

Chinese: 
他们只反当地政府
去中心化也使不满去中心化
并不直接针对党中央
我看到过一个有趣的描述：工人们认为
党还是神圣不可侵犯的。习近平和北京的语境
都还是马列主义传统的。他们以及07年的劳工法
都还是为工人着想的。
所以党中央目前还不受到威胁。
被威胁的只是地方的压制和惟利是图。特别是来自企业。

English: 
They're antagonistic to local administration
of the Party.
The decentralization means that the discontents
are still decentralized and they're not directed
immediately at the top of the party.
There's a very interesting phrase that I came
across which said the view from the workers
standpoint is that the party is sacrosanct
still, that Beijing and Xi’s rhetoric which
is all about continuing in the Marxist tradition
and all the rest of it and they want to do
good by the workers and the law of 2007-2008
did do well by the workers.
So, the central Party is not at this point
threatened because the main thing is against
local repression and local venality and the
particular corporation.

Chinese: 
其次工人的主要诉求是什么呢？
当然涨工资是明显的一种。
事实上这3-4年来的工资水平一直在涨
更重要的是，工人不满的诉求的核心
是要争取尊严和尊重。
争取尊严和尊重成为这代劳工阶级的核心诉求
表明他们开始阶级觉悟
我早说过中国已然不是低工资经济体

English: 
The second thing that is that is important
is to say what are the demands about.
Well, there are obvious demands about wage
levels.
In fact, wage levels have risen significantly
in the last three [or] four years.
Even more important, the main thing that seems
to be the center of working-class discontent
is that workers are not treated with dignity
and respect.
So, the claim of dignity and respect is absolutely
central to what the class which is beginning
to become for itself is beginning to articulate.
I've already suggested in previous commentary
that China is moving from a low-wage economy

English: 
to a more value-added kind of territory of
artificial intelligence and high-tech and
all the rest of it.
What is beginning to happen is that low-wage
labor is being taken out of China and goes
elsewhere.
There's offshoring going on from China into
Thailand, into Cambodia, Laos [and] Vietnam.
Some of the low wage labor behind the export
industries, which were very strong in this
before, is actually moving out of China.
At the same time, what we're beginning to
see are these huge transformations.
Among the most interesting is to look very
briefly at the question of Foxconn.
Foxconn is a Taiwanese firm.

Chinese: 
而是高附加值经济体包含人工智能和高科技
等等
低工资劳动已经开始迁离中国
转向他国
进入如老挝，泰国，柬埔寨、越南
中国原来强大的低工资优势
正在消失
同时我们开始看到巨大的转型
最有趣的典型案例就是富士康
富士康来自台湾

English: 
It produces 50% of the world's computers,
iPhones and all the rest of it.
It sets up a whole city in which production
occurs in Shenzhen.
Nobody quite knows how many people are employed
in Foxconn City.
It's between 250,000 or 400,000 people in
one industrial complex.
In 2011, there was a wave of suicides, worker
suicides, which created all kinds of problems.
When this became known, there was a lot of
pressure on Apple to say: “Hey!
You've got to do something.”
So, Foxconn itself is beginning to say alright
they want to automate their factories.
Foxconn is beginning to export its production
activity all around the world, including now

Chinese: 
生产世界半数的电脑和iphone及其他
它在深圳设厂建城
没人确切知道它有多少雇员
在一处厂区可能就有250000到400000人
2011年发生了一波员工自杀潮造成了很多舆论困境
连苹果公司也不得不要求
其整改
于是富士康就开始搞全自动化
并开始向世界范围转移其工厂

Chinese: 
比如威士康新洲就给了它40亿
帮他来建了厂。
但那不是高就业厂而是高科技厂
而中国的情况将会很有趣
党迟早要面临人口就业难的问题
工潮运动使工人其越来越觉悟
成为觉悟的工人阶级
现阶段我们看到工人运动和学生运动的结合
而学生运动则是来自毛主义传统
共产党的应对措施是镇压
目前学生是被圈禁起来了

English: 
putting a factory in Wisconsin where it's
been given something like four billion dollars
to come in and set up a factory.
But it's going to be a high-tech factory,
not a high-level employment factory.
This situation in China is potentially very
interesting because the party at some point
is going to have to deal with the labor question.
And to the degree that the working-class movement
becomes more and more conscious of itself
and becomes a class for itself we're likely
to see a movement.
Right now, there is also connectivity of that
movement with the student movement.
There are student movements now, which are
coming out of the Maoist tradition.
The Party's response to this is repression.
At this particular point, the students are
being rounded up.

Chinese: 
党内害怕8964重演
题外话，8964的话题是禁忌的。
如果你跟现在的年轻人提8964. 他们会一脸懵逼
 
彻底否认
但我们最近看到一种工人掌控工会诉求
并得到学生运动支持
学生的被捕被消失会引起国际抗议
并让美国的学者参与进来抗议对学生的
不公正待遇

English: 
There's a fear within the Communist Party
of a repeat of Tiananmen Square; and by the
way, the one thing you can't mention in China
is Tiananmen Square.
If you talk about Tiananmen Square with young
people they don't know what you're talking
about.
It's complete denial.
But, what we've seen just recently is the
emergence of a demand for worker-controlled
unions and support for that demand coming
from [the] student movement.
Students being arrested and disappearing and
immediately then international protests, which
are actually bringing U.S. academics and all
the rest of it into the picture in terms of
protesting against the treatment of [the students].

English: 
So, this is a crucial moment in terms of how
the politics of China might move.
I am not convinced that it is always going
to come out pro-capitalist.
There are several local examples by the way,
where localities side with the workers against
capital.
And then others where it doesn't happen.
So, this is the situation; it's a tentative
situation.
At the same time, the whole economy of China
is slowing down for all sorts of reasons.
So, the labor question is the crucial thing
that we might want to [think about].

Chinese: 
所以目前是个中国政治何去何从的敏感期
我不认为它会一直走向亲资本主义的结果
有些地方的案例出现了地方政府和工人站台反对资方
 
但其他地方却没有
所以说这是个敏感期
同时中国经济增长正在以各种原因减缓
所以中国的劳工问题很重要值得我们思考

Chinese: 
最困难的是资讯来源不足
中国政府不愿透露信息
我们的资讯主要来源于香港和各种社会团体
用以了解中国的劳工情况
基于此，我认为未来资本主义的发展很可能取决于
中国内部的政治风云变换
未来可能的反资本主义政治将生成于
中国的工人运动。
谢谢观看
您收听的是大卫哈维讲述反资本主义编年史。由”岗位民主“组织制作
特别感谢Patreon社团成员的大力支持和资助本节目。

English: 
It's the thing that's most difficult to find
any information about because Chinese authorities
are not very interested in conveying it so
we are mainly getting the kind of information
we want out of Hong Kong and various other
kinds of social groups who get into trying
to understand the conditions of labor in China.
But in this sense, I would argue that the
future of capital is going to very much depend
upon the kind of dynamic we see in China.
I think also the future possibilities for
anti-capitalist politics lie very much within
the realm of what is happening to the labor
movement in China itself.
Thank you for joining me today.
You've been listening to David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist
Chronicles, a Democracy at Work production.
A special thank you to the wonderful Patreon
community for supporting this project.
