Book Review: Hillenbrand, Margaret. On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023.

The Chinese Dream, promoted by Xi Jinping since 2012, envisions the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, projecting a future in which China is modernized, civilized, and prosperous. While advocating for the eradication of poverty and a commitment to common prosperity, it also urges young people to reject despondency and defeatism, maintain a positive attitude, spread optimism, and strive for upward mobility. However, beneath this vision of a harmonious and orderly society lies a tension between safety and precarity, inclusion and exclusion, and acceptance and expulsion. With little hope for a future in their rural hometowns, young adults are compelled to migrate to cities, where they endure grueling overtime, low wages, and harsh working conditions in factories. Some, like the well-known migrant worker-poet Xu Lizhi (許立志) in 2014, have taken their own lives—his suicide by jumping from a Foxconn factory remains a haunting testament to these systemic pressures that render to individuals what Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life.”

The condition of bare life, the precarious existence, or living on the edge compels Margaret Hillenbrand to ask: What does it mean to experience precarity in post-socialist China (23)? In addressing this question, she employs the term “zombie citizenship” to characterize the status of underclass individuals excluded from legal protections (12) and experiencing forced eviction, rural-to-urban migration, excessive work hours, underpayment, lack of pensions, minimal livelihood allowances (低保), or precarious working environments (7). These individuals form what she calls the “underclass,” a term she prefers over “subaltern” to avoid conflation with its postcolonial meaning. Unlike in the Indian context, where subalterns are marginalized by postcolonial or post-imperial power, China’s underclass, ignored by its long-standing authoritarian power, largely consists of part-time migrant workers from rural areas who labor in urban factories. Despite this distinction, they share similarities with the subaltern in their ambiguous status—deemed “indispensable” yet still treated as surplus within the body politic (3). Rather than adopting a purely social perspective, Hillenbrand explores cultural forms—including photography, poetry, film, performance, and social media—not merely as representations or aestheticized refractions of social realities but as lifeforms that articulate the fear and fury of those living on the precarious “cliff edge” of labor and existence.

Hillenbrand presents several cases to illustrate precarious conditions. The cases in the first chapter recall Spivak’s famous question, “Can the subaltern speak?”—highlighting both the structural barriers that prevent subalterns from directly expressing their own voices and the problematic nature of intellectuals’ claims to speak on their behalf. Some cases focus on “delegated performers,” where artists invite nonprofessional performers to participate in a group performance. In one example, a Chinese artist recruited laborers from the street who were seeking part-time jobs, only for them to later realize that they were expected to perform naked—something that made them deeply uncomfortable—as well as perform acts such as embracing each other. The artist then captured the performance in a photograph. While the image may evoke a sense of worker visibility and even suggest a form of solidarity, the reality is more troubling. The workers were recruited with low pay, and the artist showed little concern for their discomfort. Ultimately, the performance became a feel-good experience for the artist while leaving the hired workers feeling exploited.

In another delegated performance, an artist recruited 1,500 workers at a Siemens factory to speak certain words in front of the camera. Unaware of how what they were saying would be used, the workers’ words were later arranged by the artist to reconstruct Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour speech. The artist may have intended to mimic the logic of the assembly line and its assault on personhood (75), but there is something more troubling at play: The workers’ artistic contributions required no payment since the project was sponsored by Siemens and took place on company time. The work does not engage with the workers’ feelings and, instead, may unabashedly reinforce their subaltern position. As Hillenbrand warns, it presents a vision of worker passivity that neatly complements the state’s policy of ultra-stability (76).

Chapter 2 examines the status of “ragpickers” and the complex intersections of precarity, waste, expulsion, and zombie citizenship. It focuses on a heart-wrenching story depicted in Wang Jiuliang’s (王久良) documentary Plastic China (塑料王國, 2016). The film follows a young girl who grows up in a trash dump with her family, surrounded by toxic substances and particles released from deteriorating plastic. Constant exposure to these pollutants may have severely damaged her lungs, putting her at risk of chronic disease. Yet, despite these harsh conditions, she holds onto her dreams and aesthetic sensibility, collecting discarded items as treasures to decorate the walls of her “home.” If children represent the future, the girl’s life in such precarity embodies a sense of futurelessness. She and her family are ragpickers, often perceived as backward, unsanitary, and lacking discipline (99). Their unwaged, informal, and casual labor reflects the lawlessness of the dump, which in turn, as Hillenbrand suggests, mirrors the notion of the potentially insurgent zombie horde (100). Metaphorically, they are fated—like waste—to “move through cycles of atrophy, at the ‘mercy of nature,’ until their rights decompose entirely” (99). Lacking legal documents or labor contracts, they remain at the mercy of others and greater powers, exemplifying the condition of zombie citizenship.

Chapter 3 explores the contrasting roles of “vocalists” and “ventriloquists.” The concept of “vocalists” is embodied in migrant worker-poets such as Zheng Xiaoqiong (鄭小瓊), who attempt to articulate their own voices. Zheng’s work can indeed be read as an expression of the struggles of precarious labor and a critique of social injustice. Hillenbrand argues that the howling, discordant quality of her poetry—characterized by an emergent dissensual poetic voice—arises from her strategic use of repetition (132). By repeatedly using words like “hope,” “sorrow,” “wind,” “body,” and “light,” her poetry mirrors the relentless, mechanical rhythm of the assembly line (132).

By contrast, the state-endorsed magazine Migrant Workers’ Bosom Friend, published from 2002 to 2012, also employed repetition—not to amplify the dissensual voices of the underclass but to ventriloquize them. Its motto, “We migrant workers are all one family,” reflected its stated mission: to promote “the dreams of the common people” and create a self-help magazine for workers (153). However, the strategies it employed to achieve this goal are deeply problematic. First, its journalists were primarily elites who were required to experience migrant labor themselves to “understand” the hardships of their worker-readers. This functioned as a kind of “laboratory condition,” using elites to simulate and test the supposed value of workers’ lives (154). Second, the magazine’s portrayal of workers followed rigid, formulaic narratives. These stories typically took one of two forms: a rags-to-riches success story or a tale of someone who had fallen from wealth into poverty. The former is problematic because it portrayed individuals who strove for wealth yet felt ashamed of their lower-class origins—raising the question of why a magazine supposedly celebrating the working class depicted such shame at all (156). The latter depicted the fallen individual as ultimately satisfied with their new precarious existence, reinforcing the notion that the working class should remain content with their socioeconomic status. Even more troubling, such narratives invite a voyeuristic gaze, allowing some readers to derive pleasure from watching others tumble off the “cliff edge” of wealth (134). This spectacle can even take on a tone of Schadenfreude, as the fall from Oberklasse to Unterklasse becomes a source of amusement for those who look down on them (158).

Chapter 4, titled “Cliffhangers,” is the most compelling section of the monograph, vividly illustrating what it means to stand on the edge of a cliff, facing the imminent threat of death. Hillenbrand focuses on “suicide shows” (跳樓秀), in which aggrieved workers, mostly from construction factories, threaten to jump from the top of high-rise buildings if their wage arrears are not paid by their employers (169–170). The underclass is often rendered invisible in society, but once they appear on the rooftop, they transform this space into a site of performance, making themselves visible (171). However, this type of act, in the context of a cold, indifferent society, is met with government condemnation. The authorities frame this corporeal protest as a misguided attempt to gain labor rights. The term “suicide show” suggests that the individual threatening to jump does not genuinely intend to take their life but is instead staging a spectacle (179). By labeling the act a “show,” the protest is dismissed as “fake,” reducing it from a tragic expression of despair to a form of comedy that is deemed undeserving of sympathy (179). When filmed and shared on social media platforms, these incidents are often criticized as sensational spectacles, and the public has grown desensitized to them. Moreover, the characterization of these would-be jumpers as “fake” implies that only a genuine act of self-harm or death would authenticate the protest (179).

Chapter 5 examines “microcelebrities” and their short videos on the mobile app Kuaishou (快手), highlighting the complex interplay between precarity, zombie citizenship, and bad taste. This notion of bad taste, known as tuwei (土味), encompasses all things lowbrow, uncool, folksy, coarse, bawdy, awkward, inept, and homemade (208). Kuaishou’s users are predominantly young, uneducated, provincial, or poorly paid (215), and their content is often associated with the concept of “low human quality” (低素質). Characterized by anti-aesthetic, vernacular creativity, the tuwei style originates from rural areas and lower-tier cities, manifesting in coarse content, the prevalence of regional accents, and the use of awkward slogans and signature moves (216). It also reveals a stark contrast between performers’ cheerfully positive self-perception and the harsh reality of low human quality and social unacceptability (217).

Hillenbrand offers a striking instance of the tuwei style, featuring a woman who not only consumes chili peppers but also eats a live goldfish, live mealworms, and even a light bulb. To gain visibility, she must perform dark and abject acts, embracing her supposed lack of human quality (218). Her videos, marked by horror, transgression of social etiquette, and deviation from standard Mandarin, exemplify what Hillenbrand describes as the “intractability” of the “rural subject” (219). While the tuwei style enables successful performers to monetize their content, it also exposes them to classist scorn, digital shaming, and even vigilantism (208–209). It is considered brainless, disgusting, or socially cancerous (社會毒瘤), and deserving of being blocked and censored. Hillenbrand argues that some tuwei videos, however, may be deliberately crafted to cater to audiences’ feelings of superiority (220). In this sense, Kuaishou provides a space where abject or marginalized identities can be openly embraced and, in turn, subversively redefined. It also challenges the notion of “low human quality,” reframing it not as a source of shame but as a form of self-expression and agency and reanimating the “zombie citizen persona” with “unruly, insurgent energies” (220).

In the conclusion, Hillenbrand highlights the vulnerability of delivery drivers during the COVID-19 pandemic. While they played a crucial role in sustaining society, much like healthcare workers, they encountered significant discrimination. Denied access to pandemic-related benefits, they were also pressured to meet rising demand for timely deliveries, often at the expense of their own safety (255). The excessive workload resulted in unpaid overtime, and they were stigmatized as potential virus carriers (255–256). Many were barred from entering buildings to complete deliveries and were even evicted by their landlords (256). Hillenbrand states that during and even after the pandemic, precarity became further normalized, pushing the underclass closer to a form of literal zombiehood. They came to be seen as both contagious and untouchable (256–257). Strangely, nevertheless, their feelings of rage, grievance, resentment, and lost trust were directed at specific class others rather than the official system that created these precarious conditions (259). Necropolitics may be at play, suggesting that under the Ausnahmezustand invoked by the Chinese Dream, certain groups must be excluded, sacrificed, and left behind for others to prosper (259).

Hillenbrand consistently underscores that the experience of precariousness is not exclusive to China but is, in fact, a global condition. This reality has also applied to Taiwan, where, under martial law and at times within the context of Taiwan’s economic miracle, certain narratives of precarity were deliberately suppressed. Notable worker-writers, such as Yang Ching-chu (楊青矗), Mo Shang-chen (陌上塵), and Li Chang-hsien (李昌憲), have captured the struggles of workers who faced low wages, lack of pensions, and inadequate social insurance. Even after 2000, workers’ rights continued to be a point of contention, particularly during the administration of Ma Ying-jeou, who implemented a minimum wage policy that effectively reduced salaries to a standardized low level. This policy provoked widespread public outrage. During this period, the poet Hung Hung (鴻鴻) established the poetry magazine Off the Roll, Poetry+ (衛生紙詩刊+, 2008–2016), inviting ordinary people to express their discontent and anger through writing. Each issue focused on a specific theme, such as the “untouchables” (賤民) in the inaugural issue, “class relations” (階級關係) in the fifth issue, and “robber state” (強盜國家) in the eighteenth issue. These literary works prompt us to reflect on the precarious situation as it evolved in Taiwan and the ethical implications of portraying the underclass.

What troubles me particularly on this score, however, are the film and TV adaptations of the prose collection Workers (做工的人, 2017) by the worker-writer Lin Li-ching (林立青). The prose collection itself is remarkable as it offers Lin’s first-hand perspective on the struggles of workers in precarious conditions. However, both the film and TV adaptations raise the fundamental question of who speaks for the subaltern. In these adaptations, the story is transformed into melodrama, even comedy—what Hillenbrand might describe as “clean-cut, gemütlich, socially soothing content” (210). One can clearly sense that the actors, dressed in workers’ costumes, are merely performing in front of the camera, creating what Hillenbrand refers to as a “laboratory condition.” Their faces are clean, their clothes are fresh, their safety helmets are new, their emotions are too full, their workplaces appear almost dust-free, and the ending is sensational. While these adaptations aim to evoke empathy from a broader audience, one may ask: Is this empathy genuine and not cheap, or does it give us the illusion of “I have known the underclass”?

It is never easy to speak for another class, as doing so often flattens, fantasizes, or sensationalizes their experiences. This is why we must always be cautious, and Margaret Hillenbrand’s monograph illustrates the challenges of writing for the “other.” Did she encounter such difficulties? I cannot say for sure, but as I read the monograph, I saw a scholar deeply engaged with the lives of the underclass. Their stories are presented with a nuanced understanding of the larger context of neoliberalism, capitalism, and authoritarianism. It is no surprise that the work was awarded the prestigious Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies by the Modern Language Association, as it urgently addresses the struggles of Chinese workers in an unstable labor market, the disillusion of the Chinese Dream, and the consequences of China’s economic downturn, which has led to widespread layoffs and forced many to seek precarious part-time jobs. Hillenbrand’s concern for those living in precarity is evident as she highlights the stark disparities between urban and rural areas, as well as between the “civilized” and the “uneducated”—the latter often silenced by the PRC’s propagandistic discourse. She also prompts reflection on the role of artists who claim to voice the struggles of the underclass and exposes the inhumanity of those who disdain and ridicule “low-quality” people. I enjoyed reading this monograph and look forward to her next work, which will continue to uncover underappreciated, compelling stories while challenging and enriching the field of Chinese studies.