International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Labour's Polycrisis

Kevin Lin — 2025-08-20T12:11:28Z

A concept that takes on a life of its own often says a lot about the material conditions and structure of feeling of the time. Polycrisis, recently re-popularised by the historian Adam Tooze, was first coined in an earlier era of multiple crises in the 1970s. For Tooze, polycrisis points to “this experience of not a single crisis with a single clearly defined logic…but this coming together at a single moment of things which, on the face of it, don't have anything to do with each other, but seem to pile onto each other”, and he locates the beginning of the current polycrisis in 2008 at the point of the Great Recession.

- Features / Philippines, South Korea, China, Indonesia, Asia, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Hong Kong

Myanmar Workers and Unions on the Front Lines in Fight Against Coup

Kevin Lin — 2021-03-02T08:02:35Z

Workers in Myanmar have demonstrated that direct actions are powerful and they work. … They need—and deserve—our support.

- IV554 - March 2021 / Trade unions/workplace organizing, Myanmar

Myanmar's Labor Movement Is Central to the Fight Against Authoritarianism

Kevin Lin, Ma Moe Sandar Myint, Michael Haack — 2021-02-06T08:21:46Z

“The coup in Myanmar has exposed the faulty foundation of the country's democratic transition. We spoke with an organizer in Myanmar's burgeoning labor movement — which will be central to the fight against authoritarianism in the coming days and months.” Kevin Lin and Michael Haack.

- IV553 - February 2021 / Trade unions/workplace organizing, Myanmar

China and the United States: A New Cold War

Ashley Smith, Kevin Lin — 2020-08-10T07:29:04Z

The United States and China are locked in a spiraling conflict over everything from the pandemic to trade, investment, high tech, geopolitics, and military hegemony in Asia. “We're essentially in the beginnings of a Cold War,” declared Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. “We are on a downward slide into something increasingly adversarial with China.”

- IV547 - August 2020 / United States (USA), China

How China contained Covid-19 and the dangerous world to come

Kevin Lin — 2020-04-03T05:26:38Z

This interview with Kevin Lin explains how medical personnel in Wuhan, China sounded the alarm in late December as the coronavirus began to spread. After an initial period of denial and scapegoating, Chinese leaders took decisive actions to contain the virus, even as some of those actions produced unintended consequences. As Covid-19 deaths spike around the world, China faces a potential resurgence of the pandemic and a mounting ecomonic crisis that will test the Communist Party. And although civil society in mainland China and street protests in Hong Kong have been quashed, the crisis may open a path for labor, feminist, and democratic organizing to spread among the youth, even as nationalist tensions rise between the US and China.

- IV543 - April 2020 / China, Covid-19 Pandemic

Neither Washington Nor Beijing: Socialists, Inter-Imperial Rivalry, and Hong Kong

Ashley Smith, Kevin Lin — 2020-03-06T07:19:01Z

Democratic socialists need an internationalist anti-imperialism that builds solidarity from below with progressive currents in Hong Kong and mainland China.

- IV542 - March 2020 / United States (USA), Russia, China, Hong Kong

The rebellion in Hong Kong is intensifying

Au Loong-Yu, Kevin Lin — 2019-08-02T09:20:59Z

Massive demonstrations in Hong Kong have forced the government to shelve a bill that could muzzle dissident voices. But the protesters are still on the streets â€” and they're demanding the resignation of Hong Kong's chief executive.

- iV535 - August 2019 / China, Hong Kong

Everything You Need to Know About the Hong Kong Protests

2019-06-20T09:15:28Z

Hong Kong's government tried to rush through a bill that would limit civil liberties. Instead they triggered a tidal wave of protests â€” some of the largest in modern history. Kevin Lin interviews Au Loong Yu, Chris Chan, Lam Chi Leung, Chun-Wing Lee, Alexa and Student Labour Action Coalition.

- IV533 - June 2019 / China, Hong Kong

Slowing economy – Chinese Strikes in Manufacturing: from Offensive to Defensive?

Kevin Lin — 2015-10-06T10:11:53Z

China's slowing economy, especially its weakening export sector, has framed the recent wave of labor protests in the manufacturing sector. Seven years after the Great Financial Crisis, China has been dealing with unstable export market in the North America and Europe. While the government puts the economic growth rate at a steady 7 per cent, there are visible signs of economic distress reflected in declining industrial activities. And there is no easy fix. In fact, the government has hoped to upgrade manufacturing, and to some degree turned a blind eye to the decline of low-tech export processing.

- IV489 - October 2015 / Economy, China

Anatomy of a Collapse

Kevin Lin — 2015-08-14T08:05:25Z

The Chinese state's intervention after the stock market crash was immensely political â€” as was the collapse itself.

- Debate / Economy, China, Debate section