Entrapped by E-Commerce

Growing up in 1990s China, I encountered two contradictory narratives about what it meant to be a worker. In older periodicals and occasionally in state media, workers were hailed as the ‘master class’ and being one was glorious. Many of my relatives and teachers, however, held up laid-off state-enterprise workers as a stern warning: if you did not excel, you would be weeded out.The shifting status of workers in Chinese society embodied the country’s transition from socialist revolutionary power to market capitalism. How did Chinese workers see themselves before and during this transition? Has the Party-State ever lived up to its promises to the working class? And what did workers demand during waves of labour militancy? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with sociologists Eli Friedman and Yueran Zhang about the stirring history of labour activism in China and what it can teach us today.

Life before e-commerce can feel like a foreign country. For the ‘Chinamaxxing’ crowd, fresh meals and fancy gadgets delivered to your doorstep almost instantly, at astonishingly low prices, are among the country’s top draws. Yet these conveniences come with hidden costs, and China’s path to becoming an e-commerce giant has been far from certain.How do digital platforms from Alibaba to Didi navigate shifting politics, and how have central and local governments responded to these ventures? Can internet-based businesses liberate and empower, or is the freedom to buy and sell ultimately a form of entrapment? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with business school professor Lizhi Liu and science and technology studies scholar Jack Linzhou Xing about the distinctive trajectories of China’s e-commerce giants, and the promises and pitfalls of the digital economy.

The need for food and medicine is universal. Yet, few subjects have stirred as much nationalistic debates on both sides of the Pacific as the development and application of biotechnologies. Why, in a country scarred by famine like China, did the public turn against genetically modified crops? Should medicine be a commodity, and if so, what role should a nominally socialist state play in bringing new drugs to market? Can a company be both patriotic and globally successful? And can Chinese and American scientists collaborate to find a cure for cancer? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with sociologist Abigail Coplin and physician-scientist Chenjian Li on the power and limitations of biotechnologies, and how the body can become a geopolitical battleground and a site for profit.

For millions of children in China, life has been a race against time since the day they were born. They are blasted with advertisements that warn ‘Do Not Lose at the Starting Line’, and handed by their elders a checklist of tasks that should be completed by a certain age: diplomas, property, marriage, parenthood. Yet, being able to follow such a timeline indicates a degree of privilege. The less fortunate are forced to abandon their dreams and mortgage their futures to provide for their families. The more affluent, on the other hand, can purchase shortcuts, especially through an elite education in a Western country.Time as a social construct is not equal. How do time differences manifest across borders and class divisions? What motivates Chinese children to study overseas, and how do they and their parents plan their futures against bureaucratic uncertainties? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with sociologists Cora Lingling Xu and Mengwei Tu on education and mobility in and out of China, and how we as a society might liberate ourselves from artificial temporal constraints.

For years, Anglophone coverage of the Chinese internet has emphasised the Great Firewall. The focus on censorship and surveillance collapses information production and access into a false binary between the haves and have-nots, the free and unfree. Yet, the authoritarian state cannot extinguish the Chinese people’s creativity and entrepreneurship, and the wall itself can unfold into a dynamic space of contention and self-expression.How have the Chinese people been innovating against political and material constraints? How is technological progress pursued and perceived both inside and outside of China? What kind of future or alternative past do people in China imagine for themselves and the rest of humanity? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with journalist and author Yi-Ling Liu and writer Afra Wang on the creative souls who dance along the edge of possibility in China, and the lure and limitations of techno-modernity.

From royal court legends to a 17th-centurydeity, gay people have been part of Chinese life and literature for millennia. Since the 1990s, legal reforms in China and the country’s integration into global capitalism have fostered new avenues for civic action. Queer Chinese activists fought for their rights in the courts, through legislative channels,and by garnering public support. Despite government crackdowns in recent years, the work continues outside the limelight, while art and literature remain a fertileground for queer expression and resistance.  How does the ancient history of queer China inspire life today? What have decades of gay activism accomplished, and what are the limitations? How should one interpret the relations between queer rights and state power, especially in an authoritarian society? For this episode, Yangyang spoke with media studies professor Hongwei Bao and legalscholar Darius Longarino on queer literature and activism in China, and why poetry can reign when court fails.

This month, China’s National People’s Congress held its annual meeting and passed a new law on ‘promoting ethnic unity and progress’. The legislation further codifies the suppression of non-Han languages and customs in China in the name of national cohesion and civilisational uplift.For years, the Party-State has dictated the correct way to be Chinese and subjected the Uyghurs and other Muslim populations in Xinjiang to mass internment, high-tech surveillance, and forced assimilation. Yet, for centuries, Muslims have been an integral part of the country we call China today. Islamic and Confucian cultures learned from and enriched each other. What does it mean to be Muslim in China, historically and in the present? What has led to the current repression in Xinjiang, and how might one survive and struggle against state violence and authoritarian control in the year 2026?For this episode, Yangyang spoke with historian Rian Thum and anthropologist Darren Byler on the past and present of the Uyghur homeland, and how identities can survive in community and through the written word.

In 2019, more than a million people poured onto the streets of Hong Kong, with many returning week after week. The song ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ soon emerged as the movement’s unofficial anthem. What began as a protest against an ill-advised extradition bill quickly became, for many, the city’s last stand against Beijing’s tightening grip.Six years on, those courageous scenes of struggle feel like a distant memory. New legislations have effectively outlawed dissent. ‘Glory to Hong Kong’ is banned. Pro-democracy activists and legislators have been jailed or forced into exile. Was the movement a failure? How should we measure success in a struggle that was, in many ways, quixotic? And how might we situate the 2019 protests within Hong Kong’s unique history of colonisation and capitalist development?In this episode, Yangyang speaks with sociologist Ching Kwan Lee and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom about the significance of the struggle, its transnational legacy, and the lessons it carries for this moment of global democratic backsliding.

Over the past few years, industrial policy and manufacturing capacity, especially in the high-tech sector, have been at the centre of great power rivalry between the United States and China. The White House has been pressuring companies from its East Asian allies, including the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, to invest in the United States and open new factories, while American firms like Apple have been accused of helping China build up its industrial capacity. Amid all the techno-nationalistic rhetoric, the people whose lives and livelihoods are directly impacted by these policies are scarcely mentioned; the countries are spoken of like geopolitical abstractions, the companies like balance sheets.Why did Western capital and companies move to East Asia to set up manufacturing facilities? Who are the people whose labour propelled the industrial rise in China and Taiwan? What are the social costs in these states’ pursuit of technological might, and how do ordinary people navigate their power and powerlessness? For Episode 5 of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang spoke with anthropologist Anru Lee and sociologist Ya-Wen Lei to discuss gender, labour, industrialisation, and deindustrialisation in China and Taiwan. 

Rejecting calls from an unknown number, blocking suspicious accounts on social media, turning down a job offer too good to be true: these days, almost all of us have had some interactions with online scams. With luck and vigilance, this amounts to little more than a nuisance; yet, for the many who fell victim to the schemes, the consequences can be devastating. In recent years, cyber scams have taken on an industrial scale, and Southeast Asia has emerged as a global epicentre. This is the subject of a timely and fascinating new book, Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds (Verso 2025, with forthcoming editions in Chinese, Bahasa, and Vietnamese). Who works at these compounds, and under what conditions? When the perpetrators of online scams are also victims of human trafficking, how should the authorities deal with them? What are the common misconceptions about the scam industry, and in what ways does it reflect features of legitimate businesses? For Episode 4 of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang spoke with two of Scam’s co-authors, Ivan Franceschini and Ling Li.