Poverty and pacification : conversation with Dorothy J. Solinger

Abstract

Dorothy J. Solinger’s latest book, Poverty and Pacification: The Chinese State Abandons the Old Working Class (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), is dedicated to ‘all of those whose lives were wrenched’ in globalising China. Solinger is passionate about working people, including rural migrants and laid-off urban workers, as reflected in her decades-long commitment to activism and scholarship. As Chinese workers—to this day hailed as masters of the nation—were laid off during successive waves of economic restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s, they often found themselves depending on minimum livelihood allowances (最低生活保障, or dibao 低保 for short), desperate to make a decent living in a pitiless job market. With an eye on the new urban poor, Solinger offers a reassessment of China’s quest for wealth and power at the turn of the new millennium.