Hong Kong is a meeting place for migrant domestic workers, traders, refugees, asylum seekers, tourists, businessmen, and local residents. In Born Out of Place, Nicole Constable looks at the experiences of Indonesian and Filipina women in this Asian world city. Giving voice to the stories of these migrant mothers, their South Asian, African, Chinese, and Western expatriate partners, and their Hong Kong–born babies, Constable raises a serious question: Do we regard migrants as people, or just as temporary workers? This accessible ethnography provides insight into global problems of mobility, family, and citizenship and points to the consequences, creative responses, melodramas, and tragedies of labor and migration policies.
A close-up look at the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong in the Shadow of China is a reflection on the recent political turmoil in Hong Kong during which the Chinese government insisted on gradual movement toward electoral democracy and hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied major thoroughfares to push for full democracy now. Fueling this struggle is deep public resentment over growing inequality and how the political system—established by China and dominated by the local business community—reinforces the divide been those who have profited immensely and those who struggle for basics such as housing. Richard Bush, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on East Asia Policy Studies, takes us inside the demonstrations and the demands of the demonstrators and then pulls back to critically explore what Hong Kong and China must do to ensure both economic competitiveness and good governance and the implications of Hong Kong developments for United States policy.
This book explores the dynamics of China’s new united front work in Hong Kong. Mainland Chinese penetrative politics can be seen in the activities of local pro-Beijing political parties, clans and neighborhood associations, labor unions, women and media organizations, district federations, and some religious groups. However, united front work in the educational and youth sectors of civil society has encountered strong resistance because many Hong Kong people are post-materialistic and uphold their core values of human rights, the rule of law and transparency. China’s new united front work in Hong Kong has been influenced by its domestic turn toward “hard” authoritarianism, making Beijing see Hong Kong’s democratic activists and radicals as political enemies. Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” is drifting toward “one country, two mixed systems” with some degree of convergence. Yet, Taiwan and some foreign countries have seen China’s united front work as politically destabilizing and penetrative. This book will be of use to scholars, journalists, and observers in other countries seeking to reckon with Chinese influence.
This study opens a critical perspective on the slow death of socialism and the rebirth of capitalism in the world's most dynamic and populous country. Based on remarkable fieldwork and extensive interviews in Chinese textile, apparel, machinery, and household appliance factories, Against the Law finds a rising tide of labor unrest mostly hidden from the world's attention. Providing a broad political and economic analysis of this labor struggle together with fine-grained ethnographic detail, the book portrays the Chinese working class as workers' stories unfold in bankrupt state factories and global sweatshops, in crowded dormitories and remote villages, at street protests as well as in quiet disenchantment with the corrupt officialdom and the fledgling legal system.
Het uitgangspunt van dit boek is dat Chinese individuen van hun eigen inzet uit moeten kunnen gaan, ongeacht de beperkingen die hen door de staat worden opgelegd. Om hun belangen beter te kunnen verdedigen sluiten sommige individuen zich aan bij sociale bewegingen, die tot sociale protesten kunnen leiden.
"Hong Kong is in turmoil, with a new generation of young and politically active citizens shaking the regime. From the Umbrella Movement in 2014 to the defeat of the Extradition Bill and beyond, the protestors' demands have become more radical, and their actions more drastic. Their bravery emboldened the labour movement and launched the first successful political strike in half a century, followed by the broadening of the democratic movement as a whole. But the new generation's aspiration goes far beyond the political. It is a generation that strongly associates itself with a Hong Kong identity, with inclusivity and openness. This book sets the new protest movements within the context of the colonisation, revolution and modernisation of China."
Both Yuk-ling, a busy Hong Kong mother of two, and Chi-ying, a young single woman from a remote village in northern China, work in electronics factories owned by the same foreign corporation, manufacturing identical electronic components. After a decade of job growth and increasing foreign investment in Hong Kong and South China, both women are also participating in the spectacular economic transformation that has come to be called the South China miracle. Yet, as Ching Kwan Lee demonstrates in her unique and fascinating study of women workers on either side of the Chinese-Hong Kong border, the working lives and factory cultures of these women are vastly different. In this rich comparative ethnography, Lee describes how two radically different factory cultures have emerged from a period of profound economic change. In Hong Kong, "matron workers" remain in factories for decades. In Guangdong, a seemingly endless number of young "maiden workers" travel to the south from northern provinces, following the promise of higher wages. Whereas the women in Hong Kong participate in a management system characterized by "familial hegemony," the young women in Guangdong find an internal system of power based on regional politics and kin connections, or "localistic despotism." Having worked side-by-side with these women on the floors of both factories, Lee concludes that it is primarily the differences in the gender politics of the two labor markets that determine the culture of each factory. Posing an ambitious challenge to sociological theories that reduce labor politics to pure economics or state power structures, Lee argues that gender plays a crucial role in the cultures and management strategies of factories that rely heavily on women workers. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1999. Both Yuk-ling, a busy Hong Kong mother of two, and Chi-ying, a young single woman from a remote village in northern China, work in electronics factories owned by the same foreign corporation, manufacturing identical electronic components. After a decade o
Long known as the world's factory, China is the largest manufacturing economy ever seen, accounting for more than 10% of global exports. China is also, of course, home to the largest workforce on the planet, the crucial element behind its staggering economic success. But who are China's workers who keep the machine running, and how is the labor process changing under economic reform? Pun Ngai, a leading expert in factory labor in China, charts the rise of China as a world workshop and the emergence of a new labor force in the context of the post-socialist transformations of the last three decades. The book analyzes the role of the state and transnational interests in creating a new migrant workforce deprived of many rights and social protection. As China increases its output of high-value, high-tech products, particularly for its own growing domestic market of middle-class consumers, workers are increasingly voicing their discontent through strikes and protest, creating new challenges for the Party-State and the global division of labor. Blending theory, politics, and real-world examples, this book will be an invaluable guide for upper-level students and non-specialists interested in China's economy and Chinese politics and society.
