Workers’ rights defence on China's internet: an analysis of actors

ABSTRACT

The discourse of ‘rights defence’ (weiquan), referring to the grassroots’ struggle for legal redress after their lawful interests are encroached upon, has gained increasing popularity in China in the last two decades. Given the ubiquity of the Internet nowadays, rights defence activities also take place online; in a small number of cases, they develop into a form of online activism. But what determines or contributes to the online visibility of some rights defence cases and the invisibility of others? In this paper, we investigate this by examining three highly visible workers’ rights defence campaigns in comparison with three similar cases that received almost no attention. Analysing the various actors involved, we argue that online rights defence tends to become visible and develop into online activism when one key actor, the state, which ought to be an impartial source of justice, is perceived to be collusive or to be playing an active role in the encroachment of people's rights and interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Rights defence
• online activism
• internet incident
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lijun Tang is a research associate at the Seafarers International Research Centre, Cardiff University. His research interests and publications are in the areas of Internet culture/politics in China, occupational health and safety in shipping, and training and technology in shipping. [email: [email protected]]

Desai Shan is a Ph.D. candidate at the Seafarers International Research Centre, Cardiff University. Her research interests include occupational health and safety, labour law, and globalisation. Her current research is about workplace injuries of seafarers and compensation in China. She is also a teaching assistant in sociology of work and inequality at Cardiff University. [email: [email protected]]

Peidong Yang Postdoctoral Fellow based at the Division of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His scholarly interests include migration (particularly relating to Chinese populations and communities), international student mobility, education, and media/internet culture in contemporary China. His work has appeared in journals such as SOJOURN, Asian Journal of Social Science, Frontiers of Education in China, and Media, Culture & Society. [email: [email protected]]

Notes

1. A manning agency is an employment agency for seafarers. Seafarers use manning agencies to find employment at sea and shipping companies use them to source crew for their ships.

2. For details see: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2007/06/%E4%B8%AD%E5%AE%A3%E9%83%A8%EF%BC%9A%E5%B1%B1%E8%A5%BF%E9%BB%91%E7%A0%96%E7%AA%91/

3. For details see: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2009/07/%E4%B8%AD%E5%AE%A3%E9%83%A8%EF%BC%9A%E5%91%98%E5%B7%A5%E4%B8%8A%E8%AE%BF%E5%AF%BC%E8%87%B4%E6%80%BB%E7%BB%8F%E7%90%86%E6%AD%BB%E4%BA%A1/

4. This tactic was used during the riots that took place in July 2009 in the Uyghur province of Xinjiang.

Additional information

Funding

This research was based on work supported by Nippon Foundation.