Infrastructural power of labor

In Europe, discussions about China often revolve around state power, geopolitical rivalry, and economic strength. But who built China’s rise? Drawing on the concept of infrastructural power of labor, hundreds of millions of Chinese workers whose labour has powered one of the most profound economic transformations of our time.

Sociologist Pun Ngai is one of the most influential scholars of Chinese labour. Since the mid-1990s, her fieldwork among women factory workers in China’s electronics industry laid the foundation for her award-winning book Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (Duke University Press, 2005), recipient of the C. Wright Mills Award and now a classic in global labour studies. Her later research on Foxconn—the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer and a key supplier for global brands such as Apple—reveals the labour regimes behind global supply chains and the close entanglement of state power and global capital.

Beyond the electronics industry, her research also examines labour regimes in sectors such as toy manufacturing and construction. At the centre of her work is China’s vast population of rural migrant workers, whose labour has powered both the country’s export industries and the rapid expansion of its cities. From factory floors assembling smartphones to construction sites building new megacities, Pun’s work has profoundly shaped our understanding of labour relations and the formation of a new working class in contemporary China.

For audiences in Central and Eastern Europe, her work also raises intriguing comparative questions: what similarities and differences emerge when China’s development is viewed alongside post-socialist transformations in Europe?

A joint event with RECET - Research Center for the History of Transformations

Book recommendation: iSlaves - Ausbeutung und Widerstand in Chinas Foxconn-Fabriken von Pun Ngai

• Pun Ngai
  Chair Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University;
  Honorary Professor, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong;
  Research focus: labour, migration, gender, and social transformation in contemporary China

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