Sinica Podcast - How the Chinese state handles labor unrest, with Manfred Elfstrom

How the Chinese state handles labor unrest, with Manfred Elfstrom

09/30/21 • 65 min

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This week, Kaiser chats with Manfred Elfstrom, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Philosophy, and Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. Manfred’s new book, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness, examines the state’s dynamic approach to handling labor actions — petitions, protests, strikes, and the like — and how it has blended compromise and coercion to address the demands of workers. The book makes an important contribution to a growing body of literature that seeks a deeper understanding of authoritarian governance in China and more generally among autocratic regimes.

3:27 – How the book’s argument fits into the broader literature on authoritarian governance

9:32 – The book’s geographic focus: The Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta

22:12 – Repression and responsiveness

32:39 – Why repression and responsiveness undercut one another

43:58 – The bureaucratic incentive to handle labor unrest well

50:28 – Labor issues, common prosperity, and the “Red New Deal”

55:58 – The Jasic protests and the crackdown on the Peking University Marxist study group

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Manfred: Elizabeth Perry’s book Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition; and James Green’s The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and their Battle for Freedom.

Kaiser: The Ezra Klein Show, and particularly the episode featuring Adam Tooze, “Economics Needs to Reckon with What it Doesn’t Know.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3:27 – How the book’s argument fits into the broader literature on authoritarian governance

9:32 – The book’s geographic focus: The Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta

22:12 – Repression and responsiveness

32:39 – Why repression and responsiveness undercut one another

43:58 – The bureaucratic incentive to handle labor unrest well

50:28 – Labor issues, common prosperity, and the “Red New Deal”

55:58 – The Jasic protests and the crackdown on the Peking University Marxist study group

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com

Recommendations:

Kaiser: The Ezra Klein Show, and particularly the episode featuring Adam Tooze, “Economics Needs to Reckon with What it Doesn’t Know.”

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Previous Episode

The benefits of engagement with China, defined: An audit of the S&ED

This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser welcomes former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Susan Thornton to discuss a recently published audit of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), the annual set of high-level meetings with Chinese officials that were convened during the Obama administration by the U.S. Departments of State and the Treasury. The audit’s two lead authors, representing the two organizations behind the audit, the National Committee on U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Friends Service Committee, also join the conversation. Rorry Daniels is the Deputy Project Director at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy’s Forum on Asia-Pacific Security, where she organizes research and Track II discussions on security issues and conflict mediation in the Asia-Pacific. Daniel Jasper is the Public Education and Advocacy Coordinator, Asia, for the American Friends Service Committee, where his work focuses on China and North Korea. Susan, Rorry, and Dan make a strong case that, contrary to an emerging bipartisan consensus in Washington that engagement with China was a failure, the policy of engagement actually bore substantial fruit.

6:12 – The SED and the S&ED — why the ampersand matters

10:37 – The rationale behind the S&ED

16:15 – In the room at the S&ED meetings

30:12 – Critiques of the S&ED process

36:47 – The mechanics of the S&ED audit

44:13 – Five major accomplishments of the S&ED

1:01:38 – Other surprising U.S. gains from the S&ED

1:10:51 – How could the process be improved?

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Rorry: The Good Place (a TV show by Michael Schur) and the eponymous podcast hosted by Tara Brach.

Dan: Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise, by Thich Nhat Hanh, and The China Hustle, a documentary on China-focused short sellers, by Jed Rothstein.

Susan: The Incredible Dr. Pol, a reality show about a veterinarian on National Geographic; Hidden Forces, a podcast hosted by Demetri Kofinas; and China and Japan: Facing History, the last book by the great scholar Ezra Vogel.

Kaiser: Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, by Evan Osnos, especially in audiobook form, read by the author, and Grand Tamasha, a podcast about current affairs in India, hosted by Milan Vaishnav.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Next Episode

Can China meet its ambitious emissions targets?

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Michael Davidson, a leading scholar on China’s environmental policy, who holds joint appointments at UC San Diego as an assistant professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Jacobs School of Engineering. Michael unpacks recent announcements out of Beijing, including Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 decision to cease all funding for coal-fired power plants outside of China, and explains the linkage between China’s push for non-fossil energy and the recent power shortages that have affected 20 provinces. He also explains China’s new emissions trading scheme, or ETS, and discusses what China still needs to do to meet the ambitious targets set by Xi Jinping last year: reaching peak carbon emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

3:26 – Xi Jinping’s announced end to funding for coal-fired generators outside China at UNGA

12:00 – China’s recent power outages and their relationship to emissions reduction

19:32 – The basics of China’s new emissions trading scheme

38:37 – Coercive environmentalism, command-and-control, and market instruments

47:15 – Can U.S.-China competition result in a “race to the top” in emissions reduction?

54:24 – GHG reduction and the Red New Deal

A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Michael: The Chair, a Netflix show starring Sandra Oh.

Kaiser: Bewilderment, the new novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, Richard Powers

Mentioned in the show: Valerie Karplus’s paper on China’s ETS; New York Times Magazine piece on The Many Saints of Newark, a Sopranos prequel.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.