Chuǎng #2 - Frontiers (2019)

ln our second issue we turn our focus to the frontiers of crisis and capital in China. We expand our conceptual framework here, digging more deeply into some of our central theoretical concerns while also providing coherent narratives of historical events and contemporary faultlines. As always, we include interviews and translations alongside our own original work. This issue also contains, for the first time, two commissioned articles by authors outside of Chuǎng, each a regional specialist focusing on some portion of China’s borderlands.

We take these borders as our starting point. This issue therefore begins with the expanding frontier of capital itself, with our second long-form article on the economic history of China, “Red Dust: The Transition to Capitalism in China,” detailing the process by which the socialist developmental regime was dismantled and incorporated into the capitalist economy. We then move on to China’s literal frontiers, our two intakes exploring tensions in Xinjiang and Vietnam. Finally, we include a series of pieces exploring the frontiers of struggle and repression within Chinese industry.

• Editorial: At the Edge of the Empire
• Red Dust: The Capitalist Transition in China
  Introduction - Hermitage
  1 - Pacific Rim
  2 - Borders
  3 - Sinosphere
  4 - Iron to Rust
• A State Adequate to the Task: Conversations with Lao Xie
• Picking Quarrels: Lu Yuyu, Li Tingyu and the Changing Cadence of Class Conflict in China
• The Awakening of Lin Xiaocao: A Personal Account of the 2010 Strike at Nanhai Honda
• Spirit Breaking: Capitalism and Terror in Northwest China by Adam Hunerven
• Eternal Enemies: The 20th Century Origins of Vietnamese Sinophobia by J. Frank Parnell