Editorial Essay
On the Upstream Podcast: Dialectics of Chinese Labor
- Published
- September 1, 2026
- Read Time
- 1 min read
Immanuel Ness joins the Upstream podcast to discuss trade unions under market socialism, and why the ACFTU resists being read through a Western lens.
A new episode of the Upstream podcast features a long-form conversation on Dialectics of Chinese Labor: Trade Unions under Market Socialism. The discussion covers how the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) differs structurally from union federations in liberal capitalist economies, and why that difference matters for anyone trying to assess the real bargaining position of Chinese workers.
The conversation moves across several of the book's case studies — glass workers, logistics workers, and app-based drivers — and returns to a central problem: most Western commentary imports assumptions about independent unionism that do not map onto a party-state-embedded labor federation operating inside a vast internal-migration economy.
The full conversation is available now on Upstream's Patreon; the clip above is a short preview.
About the Author
Immanuel Ness is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg and author of Dialectics of Chinese Labor.