The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class: Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class, The

This groundbreaking book tells the story of China s economic rise from the establishment of the People s Republic to the present. Since the reforms in the late 1970s, China has grown at an extraordinary rate. This transformation did not signify the state s retreat from the economy. Indeed, it was China s communist foundation that enabled this astounding development. Yet at the same time, those reforms saw China give up on the idea of equality, unmaking a working class that the revolution had forged. Teemu Ruskola s engaging and accessible account focuses on the organization of land and labor as the key to understanding China s rise, explaining how their commodification has remade not only the Chinese nation-state but global capitalism itself.

Challenging dominant narratives of economic development, this book demonstrates how the evolution of Chinese state capitalism diverges from both England s passage from feudalism to capitalism and the Soviet Union s post-socialist transformations. Highlighting the planetary limits of development, The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class is an urgent call to rethink our relationship to labor and land, production and nature.