Syllabus

Understanding China and Resisting Sinophobia in 2025

An Introductory Syllabus by Critical China Scholars


As China’s influence grows on the world stage, the specter of China looms ever larger in the political machinations of the US and its allies, while the promise of China as an humane alternative continues to bloom in the political imaginaries of leftists around the world. Understanding China is crucial if we are to respond effectively to global crises in ways that foster equity and justice, rather than deepening divisions, exacerbating suffering, and bolstering oppressive regimes—including those in the US and in the PRC. Equally urgent is our need to understand the significance of China as specter and as promise—the ways in which distorted representations of China as specter are being used to bolster US nationalism on the one hand, while, on the other hand, equally distorted representations of China as benevolent socialist regime are being used to gloss over myriad injustices in the country and beyond.

This syllabus follows the principles embraced by the Critical China Scholars to foster an understanding of China that resists Sinophobia and the nationalist agendas it feeds, while fostering solidarity with the many people in China and among the Chinese diaspora who are working for a more just and equitable world.

A critical perspective requires that we keep a sharp eye on the influence history and historical narratives are exerting on our current moment. Of course, present-day social inequities and ecological crises have been profoundly shaped by past events. At the same time, old political narratives are being resuscitated to frame new realities—and so we see a “new McCarthyism” and other phenomena reminiscent of the Cold War. Recognizing such historical parallels can be enlightening. However, some of the parallels being drawn are facile or downright misleading: Xi Jinping is not Mao Zedong; nor is Trump a “cultural revolutionary” in the style of the “Great Helmsman.”

In the West, China is often treated as a monolithic entity—hence the ease with which it is reduced to either a pariah state or a champion of equity and sustainability. In fact, as this syllabus demonstrates, China is complex, dynamic, and full of tensions. Rural China is experiencing capitalist transformation; PRC leaders have adopted varying approaches to global trade, often shaped by formative experiences during the Mao or Reform era; Chinese workers are embracing both active and passive means to resist capitalism, with profound implications for the global economy; innovations in China’s tech sector, along with the state’s ambitious environmental platform, continue to garner a paradoxical array of admiration, fear, and contempt internationally, distorting the nuanced reality; and political dissent has continued to emerge within China, while diasporic communities—most notably, international Chinese students—have increasingly become hotbeds of organized political discussion and action.

We welcome your critical engagement with the resources provided here, and we warmly encourage you to share the syllabus freely with all who may benefit from it.

 

New and Old McCarthyism

Submitted by Rebecca Karl

If “old McCarthyism” – of the late 1940s and early 1950s in the United States – was inaugurated by the question “who lost China?” [to the Communists], and the initial witch hunts were targeted at scholars of China who were accused of sympathizing with communism, then the “new McCarthyism” is both continuous with and slightly different from its earlier version. The new type takes “communism” as a potentially superior productive capacity – that is, China is an economic engine of the world, threatening US productive, speculative, and financial hegemony – and the targets are now far more widely spread than merely scholars of China. Today’s targets include anti-Zionist activists who critique Israeli settler colonial history and contemporary genocidal eliminationism against the Palestinian people; purported spies embedded in US medical, STEM, and tech industries who gather intel and report back to their supposed Chinese masters; African-American, gender, and sexuality studies people and advocates whose decades-long fights for civil rights are being undone in lightning-speed penstrokes… and so on. This may mean that we need to think “new McCarthyism” differently, as a total assault on knowledge production and education rather than as a niche targeting of specific forms of knowledge alone.

The first set of readings set out, in scholarly, journalistic and academic form, accounts of the “old McCarthyism” of the 1940s/50s. The second set of readings deals with the complexity of politics by fear, academic freedom, Gaza, and China. There are podcasts, interviews, journal articles, and a couple academic works.

READINGS

Old McCarthyism:

“New” McCarthyism:

 

How the Pro-PRC Left Thinks about China

Submitted by Fabio Lanza

The relation between the global “Left” and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is long, complicated, and full of twists and turns. The Left’s interest in China dates back at least to the 1930s, when the Long March and the war of resistance against Japan shaped the reputation of the Maoist guerrilla fighters. The success of the Chinese Communist revolution (an explicitly non-white revolution) emerged as a model for many colonized people fighting for national liberation, including Black Liberation in the United States. Maoism reached its peak of popularity among Western radical leftists in the 1960s and 1970s with the Cultural Revolution, which echoed struggles by students and workers in Europe or the US, often aimed against the official parties of “the Left.”

After the death of Mao and the introduction of capitalist reform in the 1980s, that interest has obviously faded. But, in recent years, partly in coincidence with the ascent of Xi Jinping to the CCP leadership, sectors of the “Left” (mostly but not exclusively in Euro-America) have taken positions explicitly pro-China, accepting the claims that the PRC presents an alternative to Western capitalism and pursues global relations which are by definition “non imperialist.” By “Left” here we mean groups, organizations, or individuals who are openly critical of the capitalist global order and of US imperialism.

The first four readings are critical of the pro-China Left and of their assumptions concerning the PRC. They also aim at clarifying the differences between the “global Maoism” of the past and the Sinophilia of the present. The last three pieces are instead examples of these pro-China positions.

READINGS

 

Rural China

Submitted by Alexander F. Day

At the beginning of the postsocialist Reform Period (1978), China’s rural population remained slightly above 80 percent of its total population, although not all of the rural population worked in agriculture. With rural-to-urban migration accelerating during the period, especially in the 2000s, the rural population now only accounts for 35 percent. The structure of Chinese agriculture has also changed dramatically since the late 1970s, with the introduction of the Household Responsibility System (HRS), which placed production decisions in the hands of farming households which held increasingly longer contracts for land. The HRS was a compromise between the state’s desire to shift responsibility for agricultural production onto rural households and raise incentives while forestalling the reemergence of sharp class differences in the countryside. Under this system, which provided some autonomy to the rural economy and protection for the peasantry, agricultural production initially rose.

By the mid-1990s, however, the CCP returned to its long-term goal of raising the scale of agricultural production, although peasant poverty and resistance slowed the process. The problems of rural society in the late 1990s, known in China as the “three rural problems” (sannong wenti), produced a widening income gap between rural and urban residents, leading the CCP to introduce ameliorative reforms to lighten the “burden” on the peasantry in the early 2000s. Following these reforms, in the years running up to the 2008 economic crisis, the CCP began to institute a new set of rural reforms that have basically brought the compromise HRS to an end and fully begun the process of capitalist agrarian change—the transformation of agriculture as capitalist social relations and capital enters the countryside leading to market dependency and class differentiation. Key policy changes that have facilitated contemporary capitalist agrarian change in China include: land transfer, incentives to scale-up agricultural production, the creation of specialized coops to help integrate farming with processing and input markets, and the encouragement of rural and urban capital’s entry into agriculture. The outcome is the end of rural economic autonomy and increasing class differentiation.

READINGS

 

Political Economy and Global Trade

Submitted by Andrew Liu

Since 1978, the Chinese state has embarked on a program of liberalizing its political-economic system, on both domestic and global fronts. It dismantled agricultural communes and planned prices in favor of a market-based system; it encouraged private industries in the countryside; and it deregulated state-owned enterprises in cities. In the 1980s and 90s, Chinese leaders encouraged outside investment, especially from diasporic capital in Hong Kong and Taiwan. After lobbying the US to help gain entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, foreign investment from Euro-America also skyrocketed. During the 2000s, both US and Chinese leaders spoke optimistically about continued, open economic ties, with massive flows of money, goods, and workers and students between the two major economies.

However, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2012 ascension of president Xi Jinping marked a new phase of political and economic thinking. Leaders became more skeptical of open financial markets, especially wary of corrupt, self-dealing officials. Like the US, the Chinese state unleashed a massive stimulus after 2008 (about $400 billion USD), and as the bubble grew out of control and ultimately popped -- first with a stock market crash in 2015 and then housing bubble crisis in 2020 -- Chinese leaders have tried disciplining finance and re-focusing on technological upgrading.

Since the 2000s, China has continued its role as global leader in manufacturing, leaving the rest of the world behind. US commentators have long complained that China's gains are the result of currency manipulation, unfair state subsidies, and policies of enforced saving and under-consumption -- strategies that have both hurt the average Chinese worker while undercutting the industrial base of other countries. This line is championed most loudly by Beijing-based finance professor Michael Pettis, and echoed, for instance, by prominent sociologist and critic Ho-fung Hung. For them, China continues to try to "export its way out" of stagnation, with disastrous results. An alternate line suggests China is no longer focused on maximal exporting but is simply investing and upgrading its own technical and manufacturing capacity, in order to avoid the fate of other Asian powers such as Japan. Exporting is naturally one part of the story, but it is no longer the end goal. Dan Wang's piece is an example of this argument.

Finally, with the installation of Trump's trade tariffs since 2018, maintained by the Biden administration, the global map of trade and investment is now in flux. Direct US-China trade has declined, and other developing countries, especially southeast Asia and Latin America, are now benefiting from Chinese investment and openings in the US markets. How exactly this plays out is so far a mystery.

READINGS

 

Labor

Submitted by Eli Friedman

China’s transition to capitalism beginning in the late 1970s resulted in more than a generation of rapid and nearly uninterrupted growth. It increasingly dominates the production of all sorts of goods, from the very low end and labor intensive, to the high value added and capital intensive. China is aiming to dominate future product cycles, and is making major inroads in digital technology, AI, EVs, and solar. This spectacular re-emergence as a world power has also increasingly led to political conflict, both domestically and internationally.

One of the keys – perhaps the key – to China’s astonishing economic dynamism has been the country’s ability to draw on a vast, relatively well educated, and politically repressed working class. These workers are by no means mere objects, and have themselves played an active role in shaping the workplace, legislation, and broader national development strategy. Despite intense repression, workplace-level strikes and protests remain widespread, and an institutionalized class compromise ala 20th century Europe remains off the agenda. Amid staggering youth unemployment rates and hyper competitive education and labor markets, many young people have decided to resist passively by “lying flat,” and refusing the social expectations of marriage and child rearing. For many years, the government has aimed to rebalance the economy towards a more socially sustainable model, but has thus far found little success. Will the state be able to effect a more equitable distribution of wealth, or will current trends towards greater polarization persist? Given China’s increasing centrality in global capitalism, the outcomes of this process have profound implications for the world economy.

READINGS

  • Matthew C. Klein, and Michael Pettis, Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace (Yale University Press, 2020). (Chapter 4)

  • Yige Dong, “The dilemma of Foxconn moms: Social reproduction and the rise of ‘gig manufacturing’ in China,” Critical Sociology, 49 (7-8) (2023), 1231-1249.

  • Anonymous, Tangpingist Manifesto. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-tangpingist-manifesto

  • Chunyun Li, “From Insurgency to Movement: An Embryonic Labor Movement Undermining Hegemony in South China,” ILR Review, 74(4), (2021), 843-874.

 

Chinese Innovation and Technology

Submitted by JS Tan

For years, China’s internet sector seemed unstoppable, fueled by rapid growth and an expanding digital economy. More recently, however, the government has taken a sharply different course, actively steering its technological ambitions toward industrial production. The 2021 crackdown on consumer internet firms marked a decisive shift away from digital services and toward high-value-added manufacturing—a strategy reinforced by Xi Jinping’s call for “new quality productive forces,” first outlined during his symbolic 2023 visit to Heilongjiang, China’s historic industrial heartland. This emphasis on production is already yielding results. China now leads the world in electric vehicles, batteries, and solar photovoltaics, positioning itself as the dominant global force in renewable energy. At the same time, as technology becomes increasingly complex—spanning semiconductors, software, renewables, and advanced manufacturing—China’s strengths across these domains are complementary, reinforcing its overall competitive edge.

Industrial policy plays a decisive role in shaping Chinese innovation. This is further bolstered by decades of investment in STEM education. By several metrics, China now surpasses the U.S. in research output, leading in patents filed and academic papers published. However, skepticism remains over the quality and real-world impact of these contributions. Whether China’s scientific and technological momentum will translate into sustained leadership across industries remains to be seen. Indeed, the debate over Chinese innovation constantly oscillates between China will dominate and China is doomed. Some argue that cutting off the country from critical sources of technology transfer, such as semiconductors, will cripple its progress. Others believe such restrictions will only accelerate indigenous innovation. The reality, however, is more nuanced. The selected readings aim to cut through the noise to understand key sectors of Chinese innovation.

READINGS

  • Yuen Yuen Ang, Nan Jia, Bo Yang, and Kenneth G. Huang, “China’s Low-Productivity Innovation Drive: Evidence From Patents.” Comparative Political Studies (2023). doi:10.1177/00104140231209960

  • Kyle Chan, "China's Overlapping Tech-Industrial Ecosystems," High Capacity (2025) https://www.high-capacity.com/p/chinas-overlapping-tech-industrial

  • Ya-Wen Lei, "Introduction" in The Gilded Cage: Technology, Development, and State Capitalism in China. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023).

  • Lin Zhang, “When Platform Capitalism Meets Petty Capitalism in China: Alibaba and an Integrated Approach to Platformization.” International Journal of Communication 14(0) (2020): 21.

Optional

  • Alexandre De Podestá Gomes, Robert Pauls, and Tobias Ten Brink. “Industrial Policy and the Creation of the Electric Vehicles Market in China: Demand Structure, Sectoral Complementarities and Policy Coordination.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 47(1) (2023): 45–66. doi:10.1093/cje/beac056

  • Matthew Hopkins and Yin Li, “The Rise of the Chinese Solar Photovoltaic Industry.” In China as an Innovation Nation, eds. Yu Zhou, William Lazonick, and Yifei Sun (Oxford University Press, 2016): 306–32. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198753568.003.0012

  • JS Tan, "DeepSeek part 1: How new labor practices propelled an unknown AI firm to the top." Value Added (2025) https://www.valueadded.tech/p/how-new-labor-relations-propelled

  • JS Tan, "DeepSeek part 2: An Outlier in China’s AI Innovation Ecosystem." Value Added (2025). https://www.valueadded.tech/p/deepseek-part-2-an-outlier-in-chinas

 

Ecological Civilization and Ecological Authoritarianism

Submitted by Sigrid Schmalzer

In a time of escalating environmental crisis, many people around the world have been inspired by the CCP’s embrace of energetic planning and mitigation strategies, guided by the philosophy of ecological civilization, which in 2012 was enshrined in the PRC constitution. However, many others have sounded alarm bells over what they see as ecological authoritarianism, which limits critical dialogue and exploits vulnerable populations to advance priorities that disproportionately benefit power-holders. Criticisms of PRC environmental policies are sometimes entangled with Sinophobic, red-scare rhetoric that fuels racist militarism and undermines coordinated efforts to address global environmental crises. At the same time, pro-CCP voices have downplayed legitimate concerns regarding the suppression of dissent and the exclusion of local communities from decision making—abuses of power that, it must be noted, plague both state-socialist and liberal-capitalist systems, and which in China are bolstered by appeals to the trope of “civilization.”

Readers would best begin with Coraline Goron’s extraordinarily helpful analysis of the origins of the ecological civilization concept, the opportunities it presented under Hu Jintao for genuine critical dialogue, and its increasingly top-down and growth-centric character under Xi Jinping. The short video by China Global Television Network presents what the Xi Jinping-led PRC state wants the world to know about ecological civilization: viewers will have the opportunity to think critically about the roles of state power, nationalist discourse, and developmentalist ideology. The MR Online article by John Bellamy Foster et al exemplifies the enthusiastic embrace of ecological civilization, and adoption of key PRC state premises, in many leftist circles outside of China. The introduction to Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro’s China Goes Green represents a far more negative depiction of ecological civilization as a form of “authoritarian environmentalism.” Readers interested in diving more deeply into the subject will benefit from exploring the ten articles in the collection Prometheus in China, which focus on a range of specific environmental issues and grapple with the contradictions between necessary political action and authoritarianism, and between state commitments to sustainability and to economic growth.

READINGS

 

The New Chinese Transnational Diaspora Activism

Submitted by Kevin Lin

Within the last decade, a new generation of Chinese international students and recent immigrants in North America, Europe and within Asia have been increasingly politicized, and some have begun to seriously engage in social movements related to China, US-based racial justice, labor and feminist issues and more. This challenges the image of Chinese international students as either apolitical or hyper-nationalistic, and represents the emergence of a new type of diaspora activism that is progressive and international.

Social and political developments in China, the U.S. and globally have contributed to this politicization. The building of a Chinese dissident community by (self-)exiled dissidents from China, especially the Chinese feminists, has been key to politicizing a layer of Chinese international students. The surge of Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism in the U.S. during the pandemic years propelled many to critique their host country, while the Black Lives Matter movement drew some into the racial justice movement.

The White Paper Protests in China in late 2022 in opposition to the harsh lockdowns and growing authoritarianism at home became a defining moment in radicalizing Chinese international students and recent immigrants who widely held solidarity events overseas. Related but developing separately are the Chinese grad students’ participation in grad student unions and campaigns in the US against the backdrop of a revived U.S. labor movement. And, more recently, some have joined the Palestinian solidarity movement since October 2023, and started to link the settler colonialism in Palestine to that of Xinjiang.

As dissent has become highly constrained within China, the centre of dissent has shifted to and emerged outside of China. This new transnational diaspora activism, while still in its infancy, offers hopes for a more progressive transformation of China and global politics. The readings provide both background and recent developments of these diasporic radicalizing and organizing.

READINGS