The most rigorous and accomplished analysis of the working conditions of Chinese cultural
workers to date. This will be a key reference point in the burgeoning literature on cultural labour
not only in China but internationally.
~David Hesmondhalgh, University of Leeds
Essential reading. Jian Lin offers a critical and empirically evidenced approach to rethink
creative work studies beyond the confines of Western experiences and theorizations. Lin harvests
his insights adroitly, boldly, and compassionately. His penchant for the schizophrenic, the
multifaceted, the dilemma, the bilateral, is a rejection of any homogenizing account of the state
and the market, of cultural work and creative class. In its place, I read more futures.
~Chow Yiu Fai, Hong Kong Baptist University
You will not read a better account that dewesternizes creative-labor studies than this book. Jian
Lin goes deeper than usual into creators’ lived experience and also wider—across state
enterprises and international workers as well indies and the digital class. Jian’s heart is open and
his mind is ablaze.
~Stuart Cunningham, Queensland University of Technology
The most updated and insightful assessment of the working condition of Chinese creative
workers. Bilateral creatives work under the planned logic of state’s creative industries, and at the
same time, work creatively and subtly against the system of governance and cultural policy. The
most interesting and intellectually intriguing aspects of the book owes much to Lin’s five years
of fieldwork.
~Anthony Fung, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
