Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: A Conversation

As the Made in China Journal was born as a platform to document labour struggles in China, we always welcome the publication of books and studies that offer novel perspectives on the ‘world of labour’. In this conversation, we discuss two recent additions to the literature: Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives, edited by Robert Ovetz (Pluto Press, 2020), and Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China’s Workers, authored by Jenny Chan, Mark Selden, and Pun Ngai (Haymarket Books and Pluto Press, 2020; translated into Korean by Narumbooks, 2021). In the former, Ovetz collects case studies from more than a dozen contributors, looking at workers’ movements in China, Mexico, the United States, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Italy, India, and the United Kingdom. The latter is a book-long inquiry into labour conditions in the plants in mainland China of the Taiwanese-owned company Foxconn, an electronic components supplier for Apple and other global firms.