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Back on the street, I watched a middle-aged man slowly dip a paintbrush into a pot of vermilion paint and methodically paint a long message of protest on the window of a clothes shop, we demand the minimum, he wrote, in characters so regular that I wondered if, in happier times, he had been the man…

[...] In the old days it was argued that industrial action was a counter-revolutionary act under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today, the prohibition is the bald expression of a fearful, authoritarian state that dares not allow its aggrieved industrial workers the right to organize. There th…

[...] In the old days it was argued that industrial action was a counter-revolutionary act under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today, the prohibition is the bald expression of a fearful, authoritarian state that dares not allow its aggrieved industrial workers the right to organize. There th…

From the moment that Deng began to move China towards the market, the character of the Chinese factory began to change. The balance sheet might be improved if the burden of the factory’s social obligations and surplus labour was shed, but how could this be squared with the state’s ideology? In 1979…

As I left, I asked Wu to show me the Lucky Gem factory, less than a quarter of a mile away. We drove cautiously past it, trying to avoid the notice of the security guards. Wu directed us to the back where he pointed out the third-floor windows behind which he used to work. Thick dust caked the glas…