Smart, Disaffected & Unseen: Li Yifan on the Rise & Fall of a Proletarian Subculture
“If you’re not a smart, then you don’t have a history. A life spent on the assembly line doesn’t have any value.”
The State of the Plague (interview & new book pre-order)
Interview with Brooklyn Rail on our book about how the pandemic has played out in China and its implications for capitalist state-building and class struggle.
天安门广场和进军建制
严厉打压参与运动的工人，成为了1990年代市场改革加速的条件，最显著的是1990年代初的食品市场自由化，因为工人本来一定会抵抗的。随着1989年之后中国经济愈发融入全球资本主义，学生和工人之间的经济利益也进一步分化了。
Bombing the Headquarters: Desperate Measures in a Time of Involution
“Using all the power of one life to resist the numbness of an entire system, and all that was left was a sigh. Rest in peace.”
Involution: Wildcat on China’s 2020
To find answers, the international left must stop looking at things through anti-imperialist and culturalist lenses and sharpen its gaze on Chinese class society.
Until the End of the World: Notes on a Coup
Soe Lin Aung looks beyond the palace to structural dynamics underlying Myanmar’s return to military rule and the possibilities for popular resistance.
Covid, Capitalism, Strikes & Solidarity: An Interview with Asia Art Tours
Communism is inherently internationalist, that requires learning about the largest fraction of the global proletariat, working in the largest technological complexes. But reading books isn’t really solidarity.
Delivery Workers, Trapped in the System
“For all those riders who are still fighting against time on the road, all I can do is to pray quietly for them in my heart.”
Scaling the Firewall, 1: #LiftTheBucket
Worker memes on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) — first in a series on social media in China
Worker organising under the pandemic: reflections from China
The impact of job losses and declining incomes on workers’ lives is much greater than before. This has repressed the beginning of a renewed period of struggle. However, this has not affected the willingness of workers who have fought directly before.
Measuring the Profitability of Chinese Industry: Data Brief
Overall, we identify a clear decline in the profitability of the Chinese economy over time, and particularly since either 2008 or 2010, depending on the measure. At the same time, the trend in Chinese industry specifically has been slightly different.
Welcome to the Frontlines: Beyond Violence and Nonviolence
The concept of “the frontline,” as developed in Hong Kong since 2014, helps to overcome the old divide between militant and peaceful protest. Those on the frontlines take personal risks to protect those around them, helping to push forward the movement as a whole, including those performing less dangerous but equally important roles.
身体分裂的神灵：致香港的一封信
香港人诉诸美国势力虽然不一定没用，但效果有限。既然只有一个美国势力把舵的全球经济系统，香港也就不可能与大陆分割，加入另一个影响圈里。
Remolding Hong Kong: A View of the Movement from the Mainland
Translated interview with two Chinese Marxists, on state efforts to take advantage of the city’s unrest for the benefit of mainland capital’s global ambitions
Free to move, forced to move: The present state of the hukou system
As with “immigration reform” in the U.S. and Europe, changes to China’s household registration policy represent not the erosion of this system of population control, but accommodation to changes in the broader structure of production.
Hooligan Sparrow: 15 Years of Feminist Struggle
Translated update on the status of Ye Haiyan following the repression of feminists in China since 2015. (Intake from a reader.)
社会传染
随着资本主义的长期危机具备了似乎非经济的性质，新传染病、饥荒、洪涝和其他“自然”灾害将会被用作延伸国家管控的理由，对这些危机的响应也将越来越发挥这样的功能，成为执行新的、未经测试的反叛乱工具的机会。一以贯之的共产主义政治学必须同时把握这两个事实。
Left to Rot: The Crisis in China’s Pension System
Translation of an article from Tootopia: ‘The so-called pension fund deficit is, in essence, the seizure of social insurance funds for investment. And this is a problem brought about by the overaccumulation of capital.’
Social Contagion
As the secular crisis of capitalism takes on a seemingly non-economic character, new epidemics, famines, floods and other “natural” disasters will be used as a justification for the extension of state control, and the response to these crises will increasingly function as an opportunity to exercise new and untested tools for counterinsurgency. A coherent communist politics must grasp both of these facts together.
The Divided God
Appeals to US power by Hong Kongers, while not necessarily useless, can have only a limited effect. Since there is a single global system helmed by American power, it is impossible for Hong Kong to secede from the mainland and join a different sphere of influence.