China's 'dormitory labour regime' is going global. Comparing SEZs in India and Uganda, Charlotte Goodburn shows how Chinese-inspired industrial zones build gendered workplace–residence systems that discipline migrant women's fertility and daily lives, while externalising the long-term costs.

Reproducing Gendered Labour Control in Special Economic Zones beyond China: The Dormitory Labour Regime in India and Uganda

This essay examines the global reproduction of China’s ‘dormitory labour regime’ (DLR) through a comparative analysis of special economic zones (SEZs). It argues that Chinese-inspired SEZ-based indust...

globalchinapulse.net

Pre-colonial African terms for "whites"/Europeans were never about the colour white Western scholars can be confused by this because most European terms for Africans mean "black" Be skeptical of interpretations of African traditions or artwork that equate "white" with Europeans.

Isaac Samuel@rhaplord.bsky.social · 3d ago

Ethnographers often assume that in Africa the colour white was interchangeable with the Western racial concept of “whiteness” But such inferences are based on an uncritical interpretation of historical data and project modern racial concepts into the past www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-white-...

The level of detail in photos from this archive is extraordinary. This is Blyvoor Gold Mine around 1953. You can see the prison-like compound for African workers (centre), white tailings dams, uranium plant and Westdene mine housing, later swallowed by a sinkhole.

Duncan Money@mininghistory.bsky.social · last mo.

Productive visit to the Mining Industry Archives in Johannesburg last week to look at material on mine accidents.

Just published! My book, Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China, is now available online for institutional users with subscription to Oxford Scholarship Online! academic.oup.com/book/62722 The print version will come out next month.

Jian Lin, Wilfred Wang, and Ping Sun’s 'Chinese Platforms: A Critical Introduction' is one of the first English-language books to offer a systematic examination of Chinese digital platforms across technology, geopolitics, culture, gender, labour. Read the conversation with @joycecontact.bsky.social.

Chinese Platforms: A Conversation with Wilfred Wang and Jian Lin | Made in China Journal

Jian Lin, Wilfred Yang Wang, and Ping Sun’s Chinese Platforms: A Critical Introduction (Polity Press, 2025) is one of the first English-language books to offer a systematic examination of Chinese digi...

madeinchinajournal.com

I have worked in the Belgian colonial archives & what's already available to researchers is horrifying, I can only imagine how bad the rest is. We must bring the truth to light. Transparency is the only way to recovery, reparations, & eventual healing.

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 2mo ago

DR Congo pushes Belgium to release millions of colonial-era documents ft.trib.al/H9QWHYh

A historic reversal: Mining companies used to pay smelters $100 a tonne to treat their metal, now smelters pay mining companies $100 a tonne for metal because of intense competition between Chinese smelters. This is what countries planning to become richer by mineral processing are competing with:

All Protocol Observed Welcome to Issue 240 of The Continent The latest Ebola outbreak is the 17th in 50 years, with more than half occurring in the past 5 years. Mining-driven mobility and mistrust are fuelling the spread. Ironically, better containment has limited vaccine trials. bit.ly/240_TC

People often say Zambia's state-owned mining industry ran a 'cradle-to-grave' welfare system but this description was literally true. The state mining company provided nappies and nighties for every newborn baby. This is what someone born in 1989 got:

For $7 an hour, virtual assistants in the Philippines are using AI to write LinkedIn posts and comments on behalf of Western executives, fueling a "thought leadership" content mill https://restofworld.org/2026/virtual-assistant-linkedin-engagement/?utm_campaign=row-social

The Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn's “thought leadership” content mill

For $7 an hour, virtual assistants use AI tools to write LinkedIn posts and comments on behalf of Western executives.

restofworld.org

I translated this incredible book by Gonglao 工劳, out this fall with @versobooks.bsky.social

Involution

Involution is the first book to present a detailed account of how the people coming of age in China’s post-miracle moment navigate job searches, exploitation, educational competition, and familial pre...

versobooks.com

Compliance as Resistance, publishing today in the Stanford Social Innovation Review @ssir.org. Thanks to Latitude Global and SSIR for initiating this series on nonprofit and philanthropic compliance, and to Jenifer Morgan for great editing. ssir.org/articles/ent...

Compliance as Resistance (SSIR)

Philanthropic, nonprofit, and civil society organizations that face highly restrictive state policies can leverage compliance to pursue their goals as legalized entities, making them harder to suppres...

ssir.org

China added a Germany-sized electricity grid last year— (This Data Insight was written by @hannahritchie.bsky.social and @pablorosado.com.) We’ll often see headlines quoting how many gigawatts of new solar farms or coal plants China is building.

In the early twentieth century, tin extraction on the island of Bangka, Indonesia, rested on Chinese workers. Koen van der Lijn argues that their labour was not a temporary expedient but the structural foundation of Dutch colonial mining, central to both its profitability and long-term viability.

Chinese Labour, Dutch Empire: Tin Extraction on Bangka in the Early Twentieth Century

Seen from above, the island of Bangka is etched with scars: open pits and flooded craters that bear witness to centuries of tin extraction. This landscape is

globalchinapulse.net

Chinese social media is shocked by a series of drug & rape cases where all perpetuators are "highly educated" Chinese men in Europe and almost all victims were Chinese women. they're part of a Telegram group called Fahrschule für Experten in Deutschland or 德国老司机驾校 amp.dw.com/en/germany-m...

Some thoughts about Mali and the Sahel. foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/04/m...

Mali Is the Key to Understanding Africa’s Trajectory

The West ignores the warning signs in the Sahel at its own peril.

foreignpolicy.com

Vielen Dank an Alexander Armbruster & @faznet.bsky.social für das Interview und die Gelegenheit, meine Einschätzungen zu den Zielen und Ansichten der chinesischen Führung zu teilen. Ich freue mich sehr über die große Resonanz und die zahlreichen positiven Rückmeldungen! www.faz.net/aktuell/wirt...

China: Hört Xi nächstes Jahr auf?

Die Sinologin Marina Rudyak erklärt, was China und seinen mächtigen Staatschef Xi Jinping antreibt, wer neben ihm das Sagen hat, welche Rolle seine Frau spielt – und wie Peking über Europa, Amerika un...

faz.net

Since Artemis will orbit the moon today, sharing one of the all-time great Chinese propaganda posters, in which the moon rabbit gives a bouquet to the world’s most cherubic astronaut. The late scholar Stefan Landsberger used this as the cover of his wonderful book of Chinese posters.

I reread these a year ago, and find that I think back on them often, both in understanding Iran specifically, but also in understanding domestic life in a rapidly shifting political environment.

Merz has touched down in Beijing and met with Premier Li Qiang already - dinner planned with Xi in the evening. Will keep this 🧵today No readout yet, wires quote Merz as saying: "We have very specific concerns ​regarding our cooperation, which we want to improve and make fair"

02. ZAMBIA The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell Serpell’s debut novel follows three families for three generations and more than 100 years of their lives in Zambia. #ReadTheWorld

The great slowdown: Germany at a standstill as ‘China shock’ hits As Europe’s biggest economy is pummelled by structural problems and external threats, rocky China ties are compounding the dreary picture My report from a rather depressing week in Berlin

The great slowdown: Germany at a standstill as ‘China shock’ hits

As Europe’s biggest economy is pummelled by structural problems and external threats, rocky China ties are compounding the dreary picture.

scmp.com

The tables have turned. Western governments are now contemplating extracting industry-leading know-how from Chinese investment in order to help modernize their domestic manufacturing.

Reverse Deng? For Professionals Only - The Wire China

Countries contemplating letting Chinese firms invest in areas like EVs should seek to emulate China’s strategy in full.

buff.ly

Die neue US Sicherheitsstrategie spricht vieles aus, was Beobachter schon wussten. Das heutige demokratische Europa, die EU als Institution wird offen zum Gegner erklärt, und ein Regimewandel angestrebt. Die Verharmlosung dieses Dokuments wäre fatal für Europa. Die Konsequenzen sind dramatisch.

🚀 Launching: Decoding China Dictionary 2025 Edition We're thrilled to unveil our new website featuring the expanded Decoding China Dictionary! www.decodingchina.eu

I keep seeing this incredibly silly map of copper producers showing "spheres of influence that are quickly becoming spheres of control". Both the premise (is the US going to control Brazil because Brazil produces 1% of the world's copper? No) and the details are wrong.

Map showing Zambia's new copper export routes in the 1960s after Rhodesia's government abruptly cut off transport links going south. Zambia was remarkably successful in swiftly re-orientating the industry eastwards:

The novel's clear killer quote.

Susan DuBose@houseofbast777.bsky.social · 9mo ago

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” #Booksky

In Tanzania, the Gen Z uprising meets a state whose old bargains have collapsed. africasacountry.com/2025/11/afte...

After the coronation

Tanzania’s Gen Z uprising meets a state whose old bargains have collapsed.

africasacountry.com

I have a new, long piece in The Ideas Letter called “The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn from China," arguing that we must learn from China even (or especially) when its successes unsettle our assumptions. Link below.