Labour Politics in East Asia

The US-China rivalry has dramatically intensified over the past five years. This conflict has already had a huge impact in Asia where China now poses a threat to long-standing US hegemony. The two superpowers increasingly see themselves locked in a zero-sum battle for control over markets and technology, a dynamic that has spilled over into military competition in the South China Sea, Taiwan, and beyond. Despite Joe Biden’s rhetoric pitting democracies against authoritarian regimes, in fact transnational supply chains have produced deep inter-dependencies between countries and corporations on both sides of the emerging “camps.” This panel aims to understand and compare how global processes of imperial rivalry have impacted workers, labor movements, and class structures throughout the region. How has the US-China trade war redirected flows of capital, and to what effect for workers? “Free trade” has increasingly been used as a geopolitical tool, with the US trying (and failing) to launch the TPP, while China has led the labor provision-free RCEP that excludes the US. What are the implications of these new trade regimes for workers? In light of the severe repression of labor movements in China and Hong Kong, has China’s increased power resulted in less space for worker organizing throughout the region? What role might worker movements play in undercutting the threat of militarism? These are just some of the questions we will address in a panel broadly concerned with how these tectonic shifts in global capitalism and geopolitics are impacting labor in the region.