Speaker 1: Welcome to Dick Bappen here a podcast about it happening
Speaker 1: somewhere else, you know. Okay, the theme, the theme of
Speaker 1: this show has gone slightly slightly off the rails since
Speaker 1: it was first conceived. However, Comma, I do think this
Speaker 1: is something that is very important to talk about, which
Speaker 1: is getting some more sort of background information and an
Speaker 1: understanding of what the history of sort of labor in
Speaker 1: general protest is in China as we look at a
Speaker 1: certain the sort of current protest wave that is going
Speaker 1: on there. And with me to talk about this is
Speaker 1: Eli Friedman, who teaches at Cornell University and is the
Speaker 1: author of the book The Urbanization of People, The Politics
Speaker 1: of Development, Labor, markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City. So, Eli,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited to talk with you about this UM
Speaker 1: partially because I think, Okay, so insofar as you've gotten
Speaker 1: sort of mainstream coverage of it, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of focus UM in term in terms of this sort
Speaker 1: of current way of protests, there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: focus on like the A four paper stuff and people
Speaker 1: sort of you know, hanging signs up and as As
Speaker 1: the coverage has gone on, there's been a lot less
Speaker 1: about the fox Con stuff. There's been a lot less
Speaker 1: about the broader trajectory of what protests looked like in
Speaker 1: China in the last twenty years, as everyone sort of
Speaker 1: like immediately reaches back for their stock tienem in comparisons.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're very good. Yeah, yeah, So I
Speaker 1: guess I guess we could in some sense start with
Speaker 1: genomen because I think this is this is has nothing
Speaker 1: really to do with it. But I guess we could
Speaker 1: start with why why are the channe in comparisons bad?
Speaker 1: And why is everyone still reaching for them thirty years later? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there there's maybe a couple of reasons why
Speaker 1: so um, the the the unsympathetic take on it is
Speaker 1: that you have a lot of people outside of China,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States, who hope for things to
Speaker 1: go poorly in China as part of our imperial competition.
Speaker 1: And so UH was a bad year for China, whichever
Speaker 1: side of of that movement you you were on UH,
Speaker 1: and so they believe that it heralds, you know, the
Speaker 1: downfall of the Communist Party, and you know, therefore America
Speaker 1: can march into the rest of the century without any
Speaker 1: real competitors, so that that is a real thing, right UM.
Speaker 1: And that I think the somewhat more sympathetic take on
Speaker 1: this is that the Chinese government, and particularly under Stigent Ping,
Speaker 1: sets a ridicul u lesslie high standard for what qualifies
Speaker 1: as social stability. Right. So minor deviations from um absolute
Speaker 1: harmony as conceived of by the state, which means, you know,
Speaker 1: no street protests, it means relatively little descent online. And
Speaker 1: to the extent that you do see forms of collective action,
Speaker 1: they remain pretty small scale and fractured UM. And so
Speaker 1: when you see deviations from that, that suggests that, well,
Speaker 1: they've kind of lost control because they do want to
Speaker 1: maintain this, you know, absolute image of placidity UM. And
Speaker 1: if we look at the whole sequence of events that
Speaker 1: led up to where we are now, I think we
Speaker 1: have to trace it back. Well, there's a bunch of things,
Speaker 1: but one of them is the setone bridge protest um,
Speaker 1: which is just a single person hanging banners off a
Speaker 1: bridge in Beijing, UM, and a single person hanging banners
Speaker 1: or holding sign in any other big city around the
Speaker 1: world does not create that kind of a stir right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you're you're in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Or or you're in Berlin or or Tokyo or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, nobody cares, right, So that but that just
Speaker 1: shows a little bit of a crack in the system,
Speaker 1: and so then people let their imaginations kind of run wild. Um.
Speaker 1: And we're clearly not in a nine situation right now.
Speaker 1: It's not inconceivable that it would develop in that way
Speaker 1: in the future. Um. At the same time, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's particularly likely for for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: And we can get into that if you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things that I think, I
Speaker 1: don't know one of the things that I've been looking
Speaker 1: at with these protests versus eight nine. I partially it's
Speaker 1: just the sort of class composition is just very very different.
Speaker 1: Like there are student protests, but it's it's they're like
Speaker 1: these these the students now, like are not the nineteen
Speaker 1: nine students, Like this is just if this is a
Speaker 1: very different sort of like it's it's very different student body.
Speaker 1: It's a very different like the class competition that those
Speaker 1: people are different. The experience that they've had in the
Speaker 1: Chinese system is very different. And then also I think
Speaker 1: someone more interestingly is like, it's it's not the same
Speaker 1: working class that showed up in because that class doesn't
Speaker 1: really exist anymore. And yeah, and I guess that that's
Speaker 1: another part of this that I think, I don't know.
Speaker 1: There is definitely extent to which these protests are weird
Speaker 1: in that it is like it's it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of people in different places who are protesting about
Speaker 1: the same thing which hasn't which you know, hasn't really
Speaker 1: happened for a long time. But also like I don't know,
Speaker 1: there seems to be this reluctance to talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that there have been like not in significant protests
Speaker 1: in the last thirty years, like especially in the nineties,
Speaker 1: there are these huge protests against sort of like the industrialization,
Speaker 1: like the destruction of sort of the Chinese welfare system.
Speaker 1: And I guess one of the things I'm interested, I
Speaker 1: don't know it asking you more about is like there's
Speaker 1: there's a kind of dejectory of what urban sort of
Speaker 1: protests has looked like and like as as as the
Speaker 1: sort of like as the Chinese working classes like increasingly
Speaker 1: become a sort of vigrant working class, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess we could jump off from there to also
Speaker 1: also I guess because that's the other thing is like
Speaker 1: Chinese cities are very different now than they were thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, which is the thing that is both incredibly
Speaker 1: obvious and also like people don't really seem to understand
Speaker 1: very well. Yeah, let's see, there's a lot in that question.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should circle back around to the question of
Speaker 1: the class composition of the students and the workers today
Speaker 1: in comparison to nine. But first let's just talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the sequence of labor protests over the past.
Speaker 1: And there is a lot of me going to stuff there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, all all really important insights um, each deserving
Speaker 1: a little bit of their own attention. So you know,
Speaker 1: after nine nine, Uh, there's this big divergence in the
Speaker 1: UM in in the opportunities that are afforded to the
Speaker 1: two constituent groups that were in Tanneman Square and other
Speaker 1: places around China. So you have the students and you
Speaker 1: have the workers, right, and there's there's other people, but
Speaker 1: like that's the sort of the social backbone of that movement. Uh.
Speaker 1: The students basically get this deal with the state, which
Speaker 1: is they demand compliance and political acquiescence in exchange for
Speaker 1: which they will enjoy a couple of generation, a couple
Speaker 1: of decades of unbelievably fast growth. And if you are
Speaker 1: graduating with a degree from one of these elite universities
Speaker 1: in Beijing or even not super earl universities and in
Speaker 1: other cities, there's a pretty good chance that you're going
Speaker 1: to experience upwards social mobility, that you'll be able to
Speaker 1: buy an apartment that you know, you will feel more
Speaker 1: materially secure than was the case for your parents, right UM,
Speaker 1: I think that that deal is coming undone right now,
Speaker 1: which explains the students that we say out in the street. UM.
Speaker 1: But in any event, that that certainly was the case
Speaker 1: for for you know, for about thirty years after UM,
Speaker 1: or at least you know, twenty five years after after tenement.
Speaker 1: The workers who were in the square in nine nine
Speaker 1: had almost diametrically opposed social trajectory because immediately thereafter UH
Speaker 1: they were subjected to a brutal regime of privatization, of dispossession,
Speaker 1: of theft of public property. They were thrown out of
Speaker 1: these jobs that they had believed they were going to
Speaker 1: have forever. It was called the iron Rice Bowl. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the main architects of that was Johnsman, who's
Speaker 1: just died. Healen with drewn So I saw. I saw
Speaker 1: a great quote where someone was like, this is basically China,
Speaker 1: George W. Bush, where everyone's remember again fondly because things
Speaker 1: are so bad now, But oh my god, this guy
Speaker 1: was awful, Like dying dying right now is maybe the
Speaker 1: best thing he ever did. Like yeah, and it really
Speaker 1: is a testament to how bad things are now. But
Speaker 1: he is I think, um, the most neoliberal anyway of
Speaker 1: China's leaders, more so than than dung shopping in some
Speaker 1: important ways. Uh. And so you know that old working
Speaker 1: class who was told that they were the masters of
Speaker 1: the nation, um, you know under Jungs them in front
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, they were just they were just
Speaker 1: subjected to these real subsistence crises. And in response to that,
Speaker 1: actually the largest mobilizations to have happened since nineteen nine
Speaker 1: occurred in the late nineties and really the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: In some cases, you have these protest movements with many
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people out on the street, resisting privatization,
Speaker 1: resisting the theft of their pensions, um and and basically
Speaker 1: this you know, private profiteering and theft of public property.
Speaker 1: And I think that even the protests that we've seen
Speaker 1: in the last a week or two, um are are
Speaker 1: still not on the scale of those worker uprisings that
Speaker 1: we saw twenty years ago. Yeah, which I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: like part part of the reason why we are where
Speaker 1: we are now is that those people lost. And I
Speaker 1: think that's been one of the other sort of themes
Speaker 1: of like Chinese protests is like I mean, I think
Speaker 1: like like some some of the local ones like when,
Speaker 1: but the large scale ones have kind of just been
Speaker 1: like just like really just been getting owned for the
Speaker 1: last like twenty really like thirty years. Like it's it's
Speaker 1: been kind of a bleak march. And I mean, I
Speaker 1: actually I want to circle back around a bit talk
Speaker 1: a bit more about the d industrialization, because I think
Speaker 1: this is a thing that like really is badly understood,
Speaker 1: especially on the left. Um. The other thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about in in that is, Okay, so you
Speaker 1: have this massive wave of privatization, you have this industrialization,
Speaker 1: and can we talk a little bit of also about
Speaker 1: how like for the people for the people who held
Speaker 1: on and say it on the industries, what the transformations
Speaker 1: that happen inside there was like, because I think that's
Speaker 1: also like not understood. Well, yeah, so you have two prosessies.
Speaker 1: One is um the uh they talked about as as
Speaker 1: smashing the iron rice bowl, right, and and that involves
Speaker 1: two process. One is just unemployment. And there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of um efforts to try to estimate how many
Speaker 1: people lost their jobs. It is very hard. Political scientists
Speaker 1: named Dirthy Salinger wrote an article called why It's impossible
Speaker 1: to know how many unemployed people? There are some something
Speaker 1: to that effect. Um, but certainly tons of millions of
Speaker 1: people lost lost their jobs and we're just kind of
Speaker 1: thrown out into the market. And it's worth remembering that
Speaker 1: they were thrown out into the market largely in regions
Speaker 1: where the market was not at all dynamic, right, so
Speaker 1: in the northeastern part of the country, which did not
Speaker 1: have the booming economy of Guangdong Province or you know,
Speaker 1: john Su Province or places like that. Um, So, so
Speaker 1: there were those people. People also probably know that there
Speaker 1: are still a lot of state on enterprises and something
Speaker 1: like a quarter to you know, maybe a third of
Speaker 1: China's economy is still accounted for by state on enterprises,
Speaker 1: but those enterprises have increasingly come to function like capitalist
Speaker 1: enterprises at least with respect to two labor relations. They
Speaker 1: still receive a lot of subsidies from the state. They
Speaker 1: still enjoy um monopolies, right, so that you know, they
Speaker 1: don't face competition from other firms, at least domestically UM.
Speaker 1: And like monopoly based firms in capitalist countries, they offer
Speaker 1: somewhat better UM pay and somewhat better benefits to their
Speaker 1: core workforce. Right. So, I mean, if you think of
Speaker 1: of GM or four in the middle of the twentieth
Speaker 1: century in the United States, or you can think about
Speaker 1: Facebook or Google today, you know, these companies that are
Speaker 1: also basically enjoy monopoly position. Their core workers enjoy, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhat better pay. Right. But the other thing that's happened
Speaker 1: is they have increasingly come to be surrounded by a
Speaker 1: very large contingent of temporary and flexible workers, right um,
Speaker 1: and so in in in many of these state owned firms, UM,
Speaker 1: more than fifty of the employees are what they call
Speaker 1: in China dispatch workers. Right. They don't enjoy any of
Speaker 1: those same benefits, They don't enjoy the same job stabilities um,
Speaker 1: and they eat in in response to market fluctuations and profitability.
Speaker 1: Those are always the first ones to be let let go, right.
Speaker 1: So you know, the fact that they are state owned
Speaker 1: I think matters to some extent um, but when, But
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that the old labor regime from you know,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies has kind of continued unchanged. Like they
Speaker 1: are being these firms are being subjected to market pressures
Speaker 1: and that's reflected and how they treat labor. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's something that like if if if you, if
Speaker 1: you listen to and Ping like actually talk about what's
Speaker 1: going on. He just constantly, every every like two speeches
Speaker 1: that he gives there is a line about how like
Speaker 1: the economy is directed by the market, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's very clear about it, and in some ways he's
Speaker 1: he's like very reganite, like he's just like, we don't
Speaker 1: we don't want what these lazy people just enjoy welfare benefits,
Speaker 1: like they believe in the power of the market to
Speaker 1: discipline people. There's no question about it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: guess the other sort of consequence of this is China's
Speaker 1: enormous my worker population. And that's definitely another thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about, because that was another round of protest.
Speaker 1: Appens to two thousands, that's about uh, this giant fight
Speaker 1: over household registration that I guess was the last kind
Speaker 1: of successful, like really mass protest thing in China. We
Speaker 1: talked about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, there
Speaker 1: haven't been the same scale of of collective protests by
Speaker 1: migrant workers. But um, you know, just as a little
Speaker 1: bit of background, you have the old state state owned
Speaker 1: working classes kind of declining or subjected to the market
Speaker 1: pressures that we're talking about, and so unrest um in
Speaker 1: that sector becomes a little bit less significant over the
Speaker 1: course of the two thousands. But that's happening at precisely
Speaker 1: at the same time that the working class in the
Speaker 1: private firms is increasingly constituted by these rural urban migrant workers.
Speaker 1: When they come to the city's they are treated essentially
Speaker 1: a second class citizens and don't have guaranteed access to
Speaker 1: all kinds of social services healthcare, pensions, education, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: and so there is a lot of mobilization. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the the Juko household system, household registration system
Speaker 1: still exists and it still has an important role in
Speaker 1: structuring people's UM classed experiences. UM, but it's it's a
Speaker 1: little bit less coursive than it used to be. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, there was this famous case UM.
Speaker 1: A migrant named Soon You're Gung Um was taken into custody,
Speaker 1: as frequently happened, you know at the time, like police
Speaker 1: would just ask people for their papers on the street
Speaker 1: if they looked suspicious, and they had a thing in
Speaker 1: place at the time called custody and repatriation where they
Speaker 1: would take you into custody and they would they would
Speaker 1: repatriate you back to your village. Right, So very similar
Speaker 1: you know to like ice rates against Chinese people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like they had even this is I think one of
Speaker 1: the things about like, insofar as you can make comparisons
Speaker 1: between like the Chinese system of the Soviet systems like that,
Speaker 1: that's one of the few things that was I think
Speaker 1: kind of similar, is that you do have these very
Speaker 1: intense into well okay, it's simultaneous that you have these
Speaker 1: very intense like internal restrictions on migration, but also very
Speaker 1: similar to the U S system. It's like the the
Speaker 1: the economy is based on everyone breaking these things, that's right.
Speaker 1: Simultaneously it's illegal, yeah, yeah, right, exactly, Like there's no
Speaker 1: illegal immigration to the United States, but the economy would
Speaker 1: obviously collapse without undocumented workers. And it's exactly the same
Speaker 1: in China. Like, you know, they're like, we we know
Speaker 1: that these people are here. We know that our economy,
Speaker 1: particularly in the coastal cities, is completely dependent on them,
Speaker 1: but we're still gonna have cops ask you for your
Speaker 1: papers on the street, and if they don't like you,
Speaker 1: they can, you know, round you up and send you home.
Speaker 1: In this in this particular case back into A thousand
Speaker 1: and three, the guy they got, it's like he was
Speaker 1: the quote unquote wrong guy because he was actually a
Speaker 1: university student and they they detained him and killed him.
Speaker 1: And so when this came out and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: they killed a college student. If have they killed a
Speaker 1: normal migrant worker, that would be one thing, but he's
Speaker 1: a college student. So so that created a big foss
Speaker 1: and as a result, you know, they actually got rid
Speaker 1: of of thetention and repatriation, which is good, um there,
Speaker 1: And so migrant workers today when they're on the streets
Speaker 1: in the big cities are are not likely to, you know,
Speaker 1: just have cops randomly asked them to see their papers.
Speaker 1: But they're still subjected to all kinds of social discrimination
Speaker 1: and definitely, um, you know, institutional discrimination. Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: we're speaking of institutional discrimination. We're going to take an
Speaker 1: ad break and then we'll come back and talk about this.
Speaker 1: So I enjoy some ads from companies who are probably
Speaker 1: benefiting from all of this, and we're back. So okay.
Speaker 1: That that's another thing that I do want to sort of,
Speaker 1: I guess, use this to push us forward a little bit,
Speaker 1: which is that, Okay, this is obviously skipping a lot
Speaker 1: of riots until I was eleven, but one of the
Speaker 1: big things about the COVID restrictions that I don't think
Speaker 1: people understand has been how bad it's been affecting American
Speaker 1: workers and the extent to which, you know, because one
Speaker 1: of the things about the House of Registration system is like,
Speaker 1: as best I can tell, this is this is the
Speaker 1: way a lot of like a lot of resources in
Speaker 1: terms of like here's how you're getting food haven't being
Speaker 1: distributed and if you know, if you're in a place
Speaker 1: that's not weird, how the registration is is like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the state's not giving you your food, how are you
Speaker 1: going to deal with this stuff? And they're not that
Speaker 1: that that that that's been a big thing that like
Speaker 1: I don't know, but a lot of this has been
Speaker 1: me being upset with the media coverage of these protests
Speaker 1: because like people will just say COVID zero and then
Speaker 1: not explain what the actual consequences of this are. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could talk about sort of
Speaker 1: specifically how how the lockdowns, especially as lockdowns have gone off,
Speaker 1: have been affecting microt workers and then how that's and yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well so we'll start start there before I jump into
Speaker 1: a question with seven hundred parts. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: think it's really important to understand why people are opposed
Speaker 1: to zero COVID, and sometimes for people outside of China,
Speaker 1: they think back to the spring of when you know,
Speaker 1: in the United States, we had like libertarians with guns
Speaker 1: being like in the lockdown, like we want our freedom,
Speaker 1: Like it is not that for all sorts of reasons,
Speaker 1: um and and the way to get at why it's
Speaker 1: different is to understand some of the classed differences that
Speaker 1: zero COVID has hasn't tailed, and I should just say
Speaker 1: it's been pretty terrible for everybody, including rich people, and
Speaker 1: like you know, we can we can feel some sympathy
Speaker 1: for them to UM, but but it's had some particularly
Speaker 1: nefarious consequences for for migrant workers. This became really clear
Speaker 1: in the shang High lockdown. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: there are three hundred million migrant workers in China. So
Speaker 1: this is not like this this is like half the
Speaker 1: population of Europe like so many people were talking about here.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's almost an America sized population of people
Speaker 1: who are not living where their household registration is. And
Speaker 1: so the basic thing is, as you were just sort
Speaker 1: of saying that when there is a lockdown and you're
Speaker 1: a migrant worker, you you kind of don't exist from
Speaker 1: the states, or you might exist, but like you might
Speaker 1: also be overlooked from the perspective of the state. So
Speaker 1: one very concrete way that this UM screwed people over
Speaker 1: was in these hard lockdowns, you're not allowed out of
Speaker 1: your house and you're dependent on the neighborhood committee, which
Speaker 1: is which is connected to the state. It's kind of
Speaker 1: the lowest level of the state. You were dependent on
Speaker 1: them for the delivery of everything that you need to survive,
Speaker 1: right critically food and medicine. Yeah, can up and say
Speaker 1: something about this. This is something This is something very
Speaker 1: very different than the American lockdowns, which is like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: it depends on like it it depends on a on
Speaker 1: on like a province of profit spasis. Like I know,
Speaker 1: my family was in Mogolia. They like in in Mogolia,
Speaker 1: like you you just you like the lockdown isn't like
Speaker 1: you don't go to work. The lockdown is you cannot
Speaker 1: leave your house like you can. You can say, I
Speaker 1: think I think their lockdown, their first one was one
Speaker 1: person in their house once a week can leave to
Speaker 1: go get groceries. But it's like it's not like yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's it's you, Like you physically cannot leave. You
Speaker 1: will be if you attempt to leave, you will be
Speaker 1: prevented from doing so. And this means that you don't
Speaker 1: really have an independent way of like getting food or
Speaker 1: like going shopping or yeah, like getting I don't know,
Speaker 1: like toilet paper, Like yeah, toilet resonates with with Americans
Speaker 1: in our in our toilet paper shortage of I mean
Speaker 1: in some cases, like people would actually just be literally
Speaker 1: chained into their apartments, right, So like, this is not
Speaker 1: whatever people in in in the U s. Or even
Speaker 1: even in parts of Western Europe, you know, where the
Speaker 1: lockdowns were a little bit more intensely policed. Like it
Speaker 1: is not. It is a qualitatively different thing. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you're completely dependent on the state. So therefore it's really
Speaker 1: really important that the state know that you are there
Speaker 1: and that the state feels itself to be tasked with
Speaker 1: your survival and if you're a migrant worker. So so
Speaker 1: one of the very concrete ways that this effective migrant
Speaker 1: workers is that a lot of them live in informal housing,
Speaker 1: even in the biggest cities, even in place like Shanghai
Speaker 1: and Beijing, because those are the only places that they
Speaker 1: can live as far as the state's concerned. Like that
Speaker 1: informal housing might not exist, there are very very frequently
Speaker 1: more people living in those dwellings than are sort of
Speaker 1: legally accounted for. So you know, like there's ten people
Speaker 1: living in an apartment that's supposed to be for for
Speaker 1: you know, a family of three, and so they deliver
Speaker 1: three people's worth of food, but there's actually ten people
Speaker 1: living there. That's a subsistence crisis, right. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the medical stuff is just is like astonishing and very harrowing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, just people just dying in their
Speaker 1: apartment because like they can't get insolent or I know,
Speaker 1: I know people who's family died because they had cancer
Speaker 1: and they couldn't get treatment for it because yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's disaster. Yeah. So so that's that's the situation.
Speaker 1: That's one of the problems with them for the migrant workers.
Speaker 1: And then in the very intense lockdowns at least in
Speaker 1: Shanghai back in in the spring of this year. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they also can't leave. So like one option
Speaker 1: would be like okay, will you go back to the
Speaker 1: place where you do have your household registration, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the village and you have a piece of land,
Speaker 1: and like you can survive. They couldn't leave, right, There's
Speaker 1: no transportation, um, and so they were trapped in this
Speaker 1: situation where they couldn't work, the government wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: delivering them food, and they couldn't go to some place
Speaker 1: some other place where they could get food. And so
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a lot of attention to these
Speaker 1: recent protests, which are extremely important and qualitatively different. But
Speaker 1: even back in in April, we saw food riots, like
Speaker 1: in Shanghai, a group of group of migrant workers just
Speaker 1: like requisitions like a truck full of cabbage, you know,
Speaker 1: and just started like tossing cabbages to people on the
Speaker 1: street because people were like literally starving. So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a real problem for the microt workers. And
Speaker 1: on that note, this has been It Could Happen Here.
Speaker 1: Join us tomorrow for part two of this episode. We'll
Speaker 1: be talking more about lockdown, similar problems with workers and
Speaker 1: this all going. It Could Happen Here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com or check
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Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
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