The Making of China’s Working Class

In this bold, original treatise on the variegated fortunes of China’s workers over more than a 100-year period, Marc Blecher considers their heterogenous fortunes and their disparate levels of agency by place, gender, skill, and political dauntlessness over time. He draws on a wealth of studies of these laborers and his own interviews, and grounds his analysis in the thinking of E.P. Thompson, Ira Katznelson, Gramsci, Karl Marx, and Michael Burawoy. There is much to chew over in his thoughtful, compassionate account.

Dorothy J. Solinger, Professor Emerita, University of California, Irvine

Marc Blecher is James Monroe Professor of Politics and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. He has served as a Senior Research Fellow at the UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies, Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex. His specialty is Chinese politics, on which he has published five books and dozens of articles on political science, rural and urban politics, popular participation, political economy, and political sociology.