China

Please join us for a lecture:

Book Talk: Governing the Urban in China and India

Xuefei Ren, Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University

Moderated by: Yao Lu, Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Columbia University

Urbanization is rapidly overtaking China and India, the two most populous countries in the world. One-sixth of humanity now lives in either a Chinese or Indian city. This transformation has unleashed enormous pressures on land use, housing, and the environment. Despite the stakes, the workings of urban governance in China and India remain obscure and poorly understood. In this book talk, Xuefei Ren explores how China and India govern their cities and how their different styles of governance produce inequality and exclusion.

Cosponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, and the Columbia School of Social Work

Online via Zoom. Please register here.

Please Join us for a lecture:

Book Talk: Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China’s Workers

Jenny Chan, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Mark Selden, Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program, Cornell University, and at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Moderated by: Qin Gao, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work; Director, China Center for Social Policy

This book talk focuses on the life and death struggles of a new generation of Chinese workers who produce our iPhones, Kindles, and Xboxes. Between the rash of employee suicides in 2010 and the outbreak of coronavirus at the end of 2019, my colleagues and I engaged with Foxconn workers through interviews as well as their shared poems, songs, open letters, photos, and videos, supplemented with meetings with managers and government officials. Taiwanese-owned Foxconn is the world’s largest electronics manufacturer and China’s largest exporter. During the period of rapid business growth in the wake of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, Foxconn workers and interning students were transferred between factories to reach ever-higher productivity and profit goals. This reflects an emergent pattern of massive, corporate-led forced migration. From a broader perspective, the fluctuation of orders, coupled with tight delivery requirements, shifts production pressure from global buyers like Apple to Foxconn and smaller suppliers in transnational manufacturing. In key nodes of globalized electronics production, large-scale labor strikes can send important messages to the Chinese state, to Foxconn, and to global brands. Should workers at Foxconn and elsewhere succeed in organizing and mobilizing effectively, they would inspire many more to strive to make a better future together.

Cosponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Columbia China Center for Social Policy, and the Columbia School of Social Work

Online via Zoom. Registration information will be provided soon.