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Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 18 No 1. 2023, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Articles

Urban Youth on the Margins: Inequality in China’s Sent Down Youth Movement by Sanjiao Tang

Chinese Firms in the Belt and Road Initiative: A Cross-Sectoral Study of BRI Activities in Kenya by Yabo Wu

Book Review

W. Puck Brecher. Animal Care in Japanese Tradition: A Short History by James Stone Lunde

Crisis Response In The Global Supply Chain Of The Fashion Industry, Caitlyn Arce

CMC Senior Theses

The fast fashion industry has developed a supply chain that optimizes profits by manufacturing garments from developing countries at extremely low costs. With consumer preferences pressuring brands to produce new cheap trends and products at rapid speed, the brunt of the costs is placed in countries where managers, suppliers, and governments turn a blind eye for the sake of economic stability and development. In moments of crisis, key players have chosen to respond in ways that reflect their priorities and incentives. Brands have reflected in their decision-making the influence of consumer demand and sensitivity to media through the risk of …

Análisis Para Oportunidades De Exportaciones Colombianas Del Sector Agroindustrial De Frutas Y Hortalizas Procesadas, Visto Desde La Relación Y Guerra Comercial Entre Ee.Uu Y China Desde 2017 A 2019, Nicolas Felipe Moreno Moreno, David Alejandro Borrero Gamboa

Finanzas y Comercio Internacional

El presente informe de investigación tiene como objetivo identificar las oportunidades a partir del sector agroindustrial de frutas y hortalizas procesadas de Estados Unidos y China para Colombia a raíz del conflicto ocurrido entre Estados Unidos y China, la investigación tiene una metodología mixta, cualitativa y cuantitativa para así lograr una visión más amplia de este fenómeno a investigar, se tendrá un alcance de tipo descriptivo y un diseño de tipo no experimental. Esta investigación tiene tres momentos claves para su desarrollo, el primer método se basa en la relación comercial existente entre Estados Unidos, China y Colombia por el …

The Past And The Present: Two Paradigms Of The Sino-African Investment, Emma Weirich

International Political Economy Theses

Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has obvious economic and political connections between the recipient and donor countries. Such investment can benefit both sides and carry certain costs to both, whether through global scrutiny or domestic struggles. This these seeks to add to the ongoing discussion of China's OFDI to Africa by comparing China's investment during its socialist period (1949-1976) and its post-socialist era (1977 – present). This comparison reveals that China's foreign policy has transitioned from a socialist paradigm to a capitalist one in the last seven decades, which brought significant changes in its OFDI policies and practice. In the …

Failed Policy As Seen In The Solar Trade War, Emma Weirich

Economics Theses

Increasing protectionist policies in the United States have attempted to protect solar manufacturing jobs; however, they have created negative repercussions for the majority of the industry. This paper aims to analyze the 2018 30% US tariff on all imported photovoltaic cells and modules and whether or not it has been an effective policy to protect and encourage the solar industry. To do so, the paper will analyze similar tariffs enacted in 2012 and 2014 by the United States to understand how the tariffs have been impacting the solar energy’s labor market and photovoltaic module and cell price fluctuations. By researching …

The Changing Nature Of Labor Unrest In China, Manfred Elfstrom, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

A qualitative shift is underway in the nature of labor protest in China. Contrary to prior literature that characterized strikes as being largely defensive in nature, the authors suggest that since 2008, Chinese workers have been striking offensively for more money, better working conditions, and more respect from employers. They explain these developments using a “political process” model that suggests economic and political opportunities are sending “cognitive cues” to workers that they have increased leverage, leading them to be more assertive in their demands. Such cues include a growing labor shortage, new labor laws, and new media openness. Their argument …

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Eli D Friedman

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …

Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor – capital and labor – state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to …

Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the countermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus …

Review Of The Book The Chinese Worker After Socialism, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

In The Chinese Worker after Socialism, William Hurst employs subnational comparison to explain different outcomes for workers in the process of reform of state-owned industry in China. In particular, Hurst provides in-depth analysis of regional variation of the sequencing and volume of layoffs, how the local state attempted to handle unemployment, actual outcomes in re-employment, and the dynamics of worker protest. By taking subnational regions as the unit of analysis, we see that the process of "smashing the iron rice bowl" has not been a unified and coherent project but rather one that has been messy, uneven, and subject to …

China Since Tiananmen: The Labor Movement, Ching Kwan Lee, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

[Excerpt] The twenty years since 1989 have brought two major developments in worker activism. First, whereas workers were part of the mass uprising in the Tiananmen movement, albeit as subordinate partners to the students, labor activism since then has been almost entirely confined to the working class. While the ranks of aggrieved workers have proliferated (expanding from workers in the state-owned sector to include migrant workers) and the forms and incidents of labor activism have multiplied, there is hardly any sign of mobilization that transcends class or regional lines. Second, we observe that a long-term decline in worker power at …

Remaking The World Of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year Retrospective, Eli D. Friedman, Ching Kwan Lee

Eli D Friedman

Over the past 30 years, labour relations, and, indeed, the entirety of working class politics in China, have been dramatically altered by economic reforms. In this review, we focus on the two key processes of commodification and casualization and their implications for workers. On the one hand, these processes have resulted in the destruction of the old social contract and the emergence of marketized employment relations. This has implied a loss of the job security and generous benefits enjoyed by workers in the planned economy. On the other hand, commodification and casualization have produced significant but localized resistance from the …

Allowing For Low-Cost Labor In Underdeveloped And Developing Countries As A Method For Initiating Economic Industrialization, Jordon A. Wolfram

Selected Honors Theses

The topic presented here closely examines the link between low-cost labor and the affect that it has on initiating industrialization in underdeveloped and developed countries. It can ultimately create a better standard of living for a country’s general population in the future, but the initial conditions for the laborers can be harsh. The low wage labor force achieves this goal by creating a competitive labor market which has the ability to stimulate economic growth. Once the initial steps of creating manufacturing and industry are achieved, then the general standard of living has robust potential to increase in the country as …

External Pressure And Local Mobilization: Transnational Activism And The Emergence Of The Chinese Labor Movement, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

[Excerpt] This article elucidates connections between two strategies of transnational social movements—external pressure and local mobilization—and two potential outcomes—paternalism and psychological empowerment. Application of this theoretical framework to the nascent Chinese labor movement indicates that an overreliance on an external-pressure approach results in paternalism, thereby precluding psychological empowerment for aggrieved actors and potentially inhibiting movement growth. Conversely, strategies that relegate external support to a secondary role and privilege local mobilization are more likely to result in psychological empowerment. In this study, I argue that psychological empowerment is a prerequisite for the emergence of a worker-based movement in China. Many studies …

China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?, Anthony Petros Spanakos

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Brazil is an increasingly important actor in global governance and for China specifically. Sino-Brazilian relations have deepened considerably but they remain concentrated in areas of trade and investment. There is also considerable overlap in interests between the two countries in other areas, such as diplomatic and political relations. At the same time, China must manage carefully important differences that exist over the enlargement of the UN and the potential challenge to the Brazilian industry.