ABSTRACT
In mid-March 2002, tens of thousands of workers marched through Liaoyang, an old industrial town in China’s northeastern rustbelt. Fueled by simmering anger at the corrupt local government and pressed by economic difficulties after their state-owned enterprises went bankrupt, workers from as many as 20 factories at one point demonstrated in front of the Liaoyang City Government building. Liaoyang has the look of many old industrial towns in the northeastern province of Liaoning. A pervasive grayness and an air of morbidity beset what once was a proud and buzzing industrial center boasting a dozen major military factories and a nationally renowned chemical plant built with French technological assistance in the early 1970s. While the Liaoyang episode could be considered extraordinary in its scale, its multi-factory participation, and its explicit political demand, it was also a radicalized version of several thousand similar incidents that have erupted each year since the 1990s.
