If you’re interested in labor in China (and if you’re not, you should be), then hurry over to the South Atlantic Quarterly where you’ll find four great articles on the topic that have been temporarily emancipated from their paywall:
Ralph Litzinger: The Labor Question in China: Apple and Beyond
Ngai Pun and Jenny Chan: The Spatial Politics of Labor in China: Life, Labor, and a New Generation of Migrant Workers
Tim Pringle: Reflections on Labor in China: From a Moment to a Movement
Ho-fung Hung: Labor Politics under Three Stages of Chinese Capitalism

Today’s New York Times runs a story about the US decision to station troops in Darwin, Australia to counter a more assertive China. The headline of the story is “As U.S. Looks to Asia, It Sees China Everywhere.” Ok, first, China is a big country, and it’s *in* Asia. Second, let’s look at the military presence of the two countries abroad. China’s overseas military installations: 0; US: 700+. Here’s a map of US military installations in the vicinity of China:

For more info, let me point you to the book Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson, here’s a link to an excerpt:

I’ve been wondering how China’s liberal media will view OWS. Would they see the movement as significant? Would they attempt to draw an analogy between OWS’ rhetoric of 99% vs 1% and China’s own situation in some way? Would they downplay it? Really, I was curious, and trying to keep an open mind. And then today I read this story at Southern Weekend (China’s most widely-read liberal newspaper), as far as I can ascertain the only reportage on OWS so far on the site, based on an interview with someone on the ground in NYC: A Movement of Complainers? Close-up Observations of ‘Occupy Wall Street’

First, another statement of support to OWS was issued by a diverse grouping of leftists several days ago, signed by hundreds:

Strongly support the the American people’s just struggle against the rule of capital

In order to protest the greed of the financial oligarchs, the US’ proletariat has occupied Wall Street, striking a blow at the Western world’s financial capital, crying out ‘End to capitalism!’ and ‘Revolution Now!’ This movement has already lasted three weeks. This “people’s revolution” has sent a strong shock wave and caused panic in the Western world. There is no doubt that, this movement that began in the financial capital of the Western world…

Utopia has up an very interesting, lengthy and wide-ranging interview with Han Deqiang on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests. It tries to put the protests in a larger context of ‘globalization’, which Han explains as mainly the result of the strategy of companies in developed countries to boost their profits by moving production to developing countries, such as China. Along the way there’s an interesting discussion of poverty in the US, and a simple primer about ‘Who Rules America?”

Unfortunately, despite Han’s own explanation, and the interviewer’s faithful adherence to Han’s logic, in the end Chinese workers are told to enter into a united front with Chinese capital. Sigh.