Strike to Survive: Workers' Resistance to Factory Relocations in China

In China, capitalist development since the 1980s has given rise to an enormous new industrial working class. In the vast export-processing zones along China's southeastern coast, countless so-called "migrant workers" or "peasant workers" from interior provinces eke out a living in innumerable factories. Through thirty-five years of struggle, they have gradually established a foothold as part of China's new industrial working class.

Countering the popular myth that Chinese workers are “stealing American jobs,” Striking to Survive documents a recent wave of factory closures in China’s Pearl River Delta and struggles by workers there to hold onto their jobs, their pensions, and their livelihoods.

The struggles of these workers in China’s industrial centers are shaping the future of labor and democracy not only in China but throughout the world. These vivid stories of workers at factories that supply multinational corporations Walmart and Uniqlo, compiled by worker-activists and circulated underground, provide a unique, on-the-ground perspective on the most recent wave of militancy among China’s enormous working class.

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