Book Review: Recoding Power: Tactics for Mobilizing Tech Workers, by Sidney A. Rothstein

Abstract

to describe Chinese cities’ attempts to allow migrants on only an as-needed basis and to dispose of them as soon as they are no longer required; “inverted welfare state” to describe how authorities prioritize social benefits for those who need them least; “rendered surplus” to describe the condition of migrants forced out of urban centers; and “reproductive shock absorbers” to describe the role of teachers serving migrant children. These conceptual innovations would start to feel overwhelming and cluttering if it were not for the fact that the ideas are so intuitive and clearly explained and build on each other in such a logical manner. The state looms large in the book’s account. It is the state’s constant interventions, Friedman says, not simply the government ceding ground to market forces, as in some accounts, that “render” some people “surplus.” In fact, if some private employers had their way, especially those involved in China’s growing platform economy, migrants would be encouraged to remain in urban areas. The details of these official actions are carefully documented. For instance, although readers may be familiar with the broad outlines of the hukou system or with news stories like the demolition of migrant homes and businesses in the winter of 2017, they are less likely to know about how the education registration or xueji system works and the barriers it creates for families. Many will also be surprised at the frankness with which bureaucrats have spoken of “population control via education.” Note that the state’s efforts are not portrayed as resulting in a perfectly tuned system of control or even a stalemate with insurgent forces, as in Friedman’s previous book on Chinese labor unrest and trade union reforms, but are instead portrayed as deepening contradictions. Expelling migrants hurts important sectors of the urban economy. Unlike early capitalist industrializers in Europe and North America, with their colonies abroad acquired by genocide, China is geographically constrained in terms of its ability to offload its surplus workers. Nor does the expansion of Han Chinese into places like Xinjiang or the use of Chinese laborers on Belt and Road Initiative projects offer solutions to scale. And the place-of-birth line that the government draws with its hukou system undercuts attempts at building (Han) Chinese unity. Here, Urbanization of People could go further yet in its analysis. As with other accounts of contemporary China, the bulk of the volume is—perhaps necessarily—dedicated to explaining how the system works. It is only briefly in the introduction and at the end that the contradictions take center stage. Yet, like Toyota’s famous “just in time” production system from which Friedman draws his concept of “just in time urbanization,” the lack of slack in Chinese cities’ plans potentially makes them vulnerable to disruption. When auto parts plant workers went on strike en masse in China in 2010, just in time production meant that they shut down their companies’ entire Chinese supply chains. One can imagine similar dynamics when it comes to the limited number of delivery drivers that a city such as Shanghai relies upon when it enters a COVID lockdown. The situation described in the book also seems quite in flux. The software applications that manage those drivers did not exist a decade ago. The challenges of keeping the diverse and numerous pieces of the system functioning in harmony amid all this change would seem herculean for any government. Nonetheless, as China enters a period of slower growth and tighter political control, Urbanization of People offers an essential guide to both the ways in which the country’s authorities have succeeded in engineering solutions to dilemmas that have stymied the development of other states and the degree to which its leaders have sabotaged the aspirations of critical segments of their citizenry and, in the process, potentially compounded China’s challenges in the future.