The New Chinese Working Class in Struggle
| Author | Ngai Pun |
|---|---|
| Published | August 1, 2019 |
| Format | Research paper |
TL;DR — Sociologist Pun Ngai argues that China’s rural migrants and urban workers form a new working class, and traces the strikes and labour action it has produced.
A forum statement in Dialectical Anthropology (vol. 44, 2020, pp. 319–329; online August 2019), published with responses from other scholars. Pun, a Hong Kong labour sociologist known for her work on factory women and Foxconn, describes how China’s turn to the market from the early 1980s drew transnational capital and created a migrant workforce.
She argues that this new class, rural migrants together with urban workers, is the political subject of rising collective action, discusses strikes and the limits of official unions, and links Chinese labour struggles to labour internationalism.
What it is: a short peer-reviewed position piece from an academic journal, written from a Marxist perspective. Publisher-copyright; no open copy verified.
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
11 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.