The Meaning of Being Independent: Analysis of the Official Narrative on Independent Work in Contemporary China

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 7: Culture, Labor, and Meaning Making at Work

Abstract

Compared to developed labour markets such as those of the UK and EU countries, where freelancing and self-employment are widely-used umbrella terms in the context of 'being independent' in the economic sense, 'Self-employment' has no status as an official category in less developed labour markets such as in China. Based on archive and documentation studies of the PRC government reports of the past two decades and an ethnographic study from May 2020 to April 2021 on independent cultural workers, this paper summarises and analyses the genealogy of 'independent work', 'self-employment', and ‘freelancing', viewing these and related terms in their broader Chinese social and historical contexts. Through a review of the relevant terms used by the non-public sector of the economy after the opening up, including private economy pioneer, private enterprise, self-driven job-searching, self-determined job-hunting, developing entrepreneurship by oneself, flexible employment, new forms of employment, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the ambiguous and fluid positions of being independent in Chinese society and labour market. It highlights the changing dynamics exhibited by independent workers in relation to the current social, economic, and political nexus of China as well as their historical and cultural references.

This paper thus contributes to the meaning of the 'private' and the 'public' in contemporary China– while being independent economically is consented, being independent in other senses, remains risky. Relatedly, the rise of independent workers has transformed the official attitude towards them, in the way that the official narrative needs to embrace its neoliberal senses. Consequently, this has reshaped the societal perceptions on ‘being independent’ in China, leading to another wave of self-reflections on freelance individuals.

Author

• Ruoxi Liu, University of Oxford