Talk by Prof. Yueran Zhang, University of Chicago.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Haines Hall 279
This talk argues that the policy turn to undermine workplace democracy in China's industrial enterprises in the mid-1980s was a significant causal ingredient in the making of the pro-democracy movements of 1989, through an indirect and conjunctural causal mechanism. The decline of workplace democracy led to intensifying shopfloor tensions and gave rise to a peculiar managerial strategy, by which factory directors sought to "purchase" industrial peace through across-the-board pay raises to workers. This strategy in turn fed into rampant inflationary cycles in China's late 1980s, arguably the single most important source of popular grievances in the leadup to 1989. This talk hence presents a novel class analysis of the political economy of inflation, and helps rethink what "democracy" means in the pro-democracy movements of 1989.
Yueran Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. A political and comparative-historical sociologist, he specializes in the comparative studies of capitalism(s), socialism(s), and transitions in between. He is working on a book manuscript tentatively titled "Whither Socialism? The Politics of Class and China’s Post-Mao Transition to Capitalism".
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies