Neoliberalism ‘with Chinese Characteristics’

was the ‘largest demonstration of its kind since the Tiananmen

crackdown’. In Jiamasu, in northern China, where about 80 per

cent of the town’s population was unemployed and living on less

than $20 week after a textile factory employing 14,000 suddenly

closed, direct action erupted after months of unanswered petitions.

‘On some days retirees blocked all tra

ffic on the main highway into

town, squatting in rows on the pavement. On other days, thou-

sands of laid o

ff textile workers sat on railway tracks, disrupting

service. In late December, workers from an ailing pulp mill lay like

frozen soldiers on Jiamasu’s only runway, preventing planes from

landing.’

58

 Police data show that ‘some three million took part in

protests’ in 2003. Until recently, con

flicts of this sort have been

successfully managed by keeping them isolated, fragmented,

unorganized, and certainly under-reported. But recent accounts

suggest that more widespread con

flicts are erupting. In Anhui

province, for example, ‘about 10,000 textile workers and retirees

recently protested decreases in pension payments, the lack of med-

ical insurance and compensation for injuries’. In Dongguan, Stella

International Ltd, a Taiwanese-owned shoe manufacturer employ-

ing 42,000 people ‘faced strikes this spring that turned violent. At

one point more than 500 rampaging workers sacked company facil-

ities and severely injured a Stella executive, leading police to enter

the factory and round up ringleaders.’

59

All manner of protests, ‘many of them violent, have broken out

with increasing frequency across the country in recent months’.

Riots and protests have also erupted all over China over the land

seizures occurring in rural areas. Whether or not this will all give

rise to a mass movement is hard to predict. But the party is clearly

fearful of the potential breakdown in order and is mobilizing party

and police powers to forestall the proliferation of any general social

movement that may arise. Lee’s conclusions as to the nature of

political subjectivity are here of interest. Both state and migrant

workers, she suggests, reject the term working class and refuse

‘class as the discursive frame to constitute their collective experi-

ence’. Nor do they see themselves as ‘the contractual, juridical, and

abstract labour subject normally assumed in theories of capitalist

modernity’, bearing individual legal rights. They typically appeal

instead to the traditional Maoist notion of the masses constituted

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