Challenging digital capitalism: SACOM's campaigns against Apple and Foxconn as monopoly capital

ABSTRACT

‘Utopia or dystopia – to where will the “digital revolution” lead human society?’ is a question that remains unanswered. Negotiating between two opposing standpoints, this article, looking at a form of trans-border activism originally driven by suicides and protests of Foxconn workers who produce iPhones, iPads, and many other i-gadgets for the world's consumers, is an attempt to explore a politics of online and offline resistance against anti-digital capitalism. Based in Hong Kong (HK), SACOM is a leftist student group which works to support Chinese workers in campaigning against corporate power and generating trans-border networks through media exposure, international activism, and localized organizing. Combining online and offline activism, SACOM strives to extend the reach of their worker–consumer campaign to the worldwide audience by transgressing dominance of capital and political control of the Chinese state. The most intriguing question to us is could this proactive activism be possible and, if so, how could it act at the grid of China's transformation and incorporation into global capitalism?

KEYWORDS:

• Apple and Foxconn
• digital capitalism
• labor
• trans-border activism

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Foxconn workers, student interns, and SACOM activists especially Ken Yau, Sophia So, Sophie Chan, and Lin Lin for the support of this action research. We are also thankful for the two reviewers who provided valuable and detailed comments for writing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Kenneth Ng http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8309-1136

Notes

1 After his death, Xu Lizhi's poems were widely circulated and reached out to an international audience. Many local artists and international labor groups helped translate and circulate his work.

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper is partially supported by both the General Research Fund (GRF), ‘Working-Class Public Spheres: Media and Activism Since ‘Foxconn Suicide Express’ (RGC Ref No.: 14612715) and the Collaborative Research Fund, RGC Fund (CRF), ‘Learning to Labor: Social Media and Migrant Labor Protection in Mainland China’ (RGC Ref No.: C5010-15G), Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.