Bio

Anita Chan is co-editor of The China Journal and a Visiting Fellow at the ANU’s Political and Social Change Department. She was formerly an ARC Research Fellow and an ARC Professorial Fellow at ANU. She then took up a Research Professorship at University of Technology Sydney and retired in 2014. Throughout her academic career she has been involved in research projects related to China, beginning with the political socialization of the Red Guard generation, a village study and China’s human rights issues. Since 1990 her research largely has focused on Chinese labour issues and comparative industrial relations, with specific research ranging from globalisation and corporate social responsibility (CSR), to the Chinese trade union, wages and work hours, occupational health and safety, the footwear industry, and lean production in China’s automobile industry. Her ten books include Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation (1985), Symbolism and Undercurrents: The 1989 Mass Movement (1994, in Chinese); China’s Workers under Assault (2001), Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization (2009) and, as editor, Labour in Vietnam (2011), Walmart in China (2011) and Chinese Workers in Comparative Perspective (2015). She has also published more than a hundred refereed papers. Her current research project compares the industrial relations systems of Vietnam and China.