This chapter explores the relationship between labor activism along global supply chains and labor politics in China. In particular, it investigates the extent to which Chinese workers have been involved in transnational labor networks, and the nature of their involvement. To date there is no systematic documentation of Chinese labor involvement in transnational campaigns, let alone campaigns specifically involving supply chains, in part because the repression of workers and activists by the authoritarian state presents challenges for empirical research. Nevertheless, this chapter offers an original analysis of five global union federations’ inclusion of Chinese labor in their transnational activities. The analysis reveals three categories of global unions’ engagement with Chinese workers or companies: (1) direct cooperation with Chinese workers, (2) solidarity actions on behalf of Chinese workers, and (3) campaigns on behalf of non-Chinese workers employed by Chinese companies. These findings provide a starting point that can inform future research on the relationship between global supply chains, transnational labor alliances, and the politics of workers’ rights in China.

Chapter 9 focuses on the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao administrations which followed Deng Xiaoping’s death in 1997, with particular attention paid to the lasting influence of the so-called “Shanghai clique” of high-level Party leaders who supported the outspoken Jiang and his conservative political, economic, and cultural policies in opposition to the more liberal and mild-mannered Hu. In contrast with Jiang, particular emphasis is placed on a Wikileaks “Cablegate” document from the US State Department in which Hu is described as having taken his cues from the business world, having more in common with a chairman of the board than Chairman of the Communist Party. Accordingly, Jiang is shown to have laid much of the groundwork for China’s two major developments in the international political sphere which took place under Hu: joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 and hosting the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, just one month before the outbreak of the global financial crisis of that year. Jiang’s perception as a conservative is challenged with reference to both of these developments, and also to increasing openness to foreign investment. Loosening of media and cultural controls with the arrival of the Internet, are contrasted with repression of the Falun Gong religious group and of ethnic minority groups in Tibet, and Jiang’s “Three Represents” policy is compared to Hu’s “Scientific Outlook on Development” and “Eight Honors, Eight Shames”. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the challenges of the Hu era which were passed on to his successor, Xi Jinping.

With a case study of the mobile phone industry, this chapter investigates how competition and collaboration among East Asian firms with different backgrounds and business models have created the industry’s dynamics, turning it into the home of major smartphone assemblers, brand firms, and key component vendors. It also explores value chain resilience of the international economy shaped around global supply chains, even if the networks have been gradually disrupted since 2018 due to the escalating US-China high-tech confrontation. In this chapter, China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan are mapped in the global landscape of the smartphone industry and changes in mobile phone production over the last ten years are elucidated in terms of production site and firm nationality. Historical contexts of the electronics industry in each country that produced a variety of business models and allocated different value chain positions to individual firms are then investigated. The discussion concludes by highlighting different competitive advantages of firms from Korea, Taiwan, and China that have contributed to East Asia’s emergence as the world’s hub of the smartphone industry.

Chapter 5 focuses on the 1967 Cultural Revolution campaign against Wang Guangmei, wife of the disgraced former PRC president Liu Shaoqi. A detailed firsthand account of Wang’s emblematic and theatrical mass struggle session at Tsinghua University introduces the story, followed by background to provide context for her poor treatment, and the larger political developments which led to Wang and Liu’s ultimate downfall. These include Wang’s early elite education as scientist, her work as an interpreter for the Chinese Communist Party’s underground in Beijing, and her eventual reassignment to Yan’an and role in the land-reform movement of 1947. The extreme violence of this earlier period contrasts with leading role in the implementation of the Four Cleans campaign in rural Hebei as part of the larger Socialist Education movement in the early 1960s. Her experience with exposing allegations of cadre malfeasance in the Peach Garden Brigade of Funing County ultimately provided a model for a nationwide anticorruption campaign, with Mao’s encouragement. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the violent backlash against the top-down work-team approach of the Four Cleans, advocated by Liu Shaoqi and Wang, in favor of the more chaotic bottom-up Red Guard approach of the Cultural Revolution that brought them down.