Pun Ngai

Pun Ngai (Chinese: 潘毅) is a Chair Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University and professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Her main research area focuses on Chinese labor. In 2005, she won the C. Wright Mills Award for her book Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, becoming the first Asian scholar to receive this honor since its establishment in 1964.[1]

Biography

Pun Ngai moved from Shantou to Hong Kong in 1979. Her younger brother is Hong Kong Senior Counsel Hectar Pun Hei. She graduated from the Department of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1992, and later, from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong in 1994 with a Master of Philosophy. In 1998, she completed her PhD in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.[2]

On 19 November 1993, a major fire killed 87 at a toy factory in Shenzhen[3] prompted Pun to focus her research on labor issues in China. In 1995, Pun worked in a Shenzhen factory as a laborer for over a year, living and eating alongside female workers. Over the next twenty years of her career, her research continued to focus on topics such as female workers, construction workers, pneumoconiosis, Foxconn workers, and coal miners.[2] In addition to labor issues, Pun's research also involves gender and cultural politics, globalization, and cross-border studies.

In 1996, Pun co-founded a non-profit grassroots organization called the Chinese Working Women’s Network,[a] dedicated to protecting the rights and interests of female workers in mainland China.[4] She served as chairperson,[5] and later, stepped down and work as a volunteer.

In 2005, she won the C. Wright Mills Award for her book Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, becoming the first Asian scholar to receive this honor since its establishment in 1964.[1]

In 2010, after a series of suicide incidents at Foxconn in Shenzhen, nine scholars, including Pun, jointly published an open letter calling for attention to the issues faced by the new generation of migrant workers. Subsequently, she collaborated with scholars from mainland China and Taiwan to establish a research team comprising scholars from "the three places across the Taiwan Strait."[b] The entire research process took nearly two years and involved close to 100 participants, with approximately 20 people undercover inside the factories, covering 19 Foxconn factories in mainland China. The research collected 2,409 valid questionnaires, interviewed over 500 workers, and compiled more than 100,000 words of primary data.[6] Several reports were subsequently released, including the Comprehensive Investigation Report on Foxconn from Highschools Across the Taiwan Strait[c] in October 2010, the Westward Expansion - Investigation Report on Foxconn's Internal Relocation[d] in May 2011, Foxconn, Have You Changed?[e] in April 2012, and the Foxconn Labor Union Investigation Report[f] in May 2013.[7] These reports accused Apple and its contractor Foxconn of being sweatshops, drawing widespread attention internationally.[8]

In the 2018 Jasic incident, Jasic workers protesting against the factory’s illegal and unreasonable management methods were met with violent treatment by the factory and the police. Subsequently, some of the protesters were arrested. On July 29, students from several universities, including Renmin University of China, Peking University, and Nanjing University, initiated a joint petition in support of the Jasic workers and called for more people to join in. On the 30th, the Hong Kong civil group Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) issued an open letter supporting the Jasic workers, with over one hundred Chinese and foreign scholars signing the petition, including Pun.[9]

Awards

  • Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace won the 2005 C. Wright Mills Award. And, its Chinese translation was selected as one of the ten books to win the Hong Kong Bookprize (香港書獎) in 2007.
  • Opening a Minor Genre of Resistance in Reform China: Scream, Dream, and Transgression in a Workplace[g] published in Sociological Studies (1999, Vol. 83, September, pp. 11–22), was selected in April 2003 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as one of the Sociological Studies' top 100 outstanding papers.
  • 《大工地上：中國農民工之歌》[On the Construction Site: Songs of Chinese Migrant Workers][h] was selected as one of the ten books to win the Hong Kong Bookprize in 2010.


Notes

  1. ^ Chinese 女工關懷
  2. ^ translated from Chinese 兩岸三地
  3. ^ translated from Chinese 《兩岸三地高校富士康調研總報告》
  4. ^ translated from Chinese 《西進 ─ 富士康遷調研報告》
  5. ^ translated from Chinese 《富士康，你改過自新了嗎？》
  6. ^ translated from Chinese 《富士康工會調研報告》
  7. ^ original text in Chinese, titled 「開創一種抗爭的次文體：工廠里一位女工的尖叫、夢魘和叛離」, translated to English
  8. ^ unofficial English translation

References

  1. ^ a b "一個農村出城的打工妹 （潘毅撰、任焰譯）" [A young female migrant worker leaving the countryside to work in the city (authored by Pun Ngai, translated by Ren Yan)]. Ming Pao Monthly. 2007-01-02. Retrieved 2025-09-25.
  2. ^ a b 王肖潇 (2013). "学者潘毅，为农民工打工" [Scholar Pun Ngai, working for migrant workers]. 环球人物 (in Simplified Chinese). Retrieved 2025-09-25.
  3. ^ "The tragic Chinese toy story". South China Morning Post. 1999-12-15. Retrieved 2025-09-25.
  4. ^ "書林漫步：研究中國勞工問題的香港學者潘毅談《失語者的呼聲--中國打工妹口述》". RFA 自由亞洲電台粵語部 (in Chinese (Taiwan)). 2006-09-15. Retrieved 2025-09-26.
  5. ^ "女工關懷開幕了!!". 獨立媒體. 2004-11-16. Archived from the original on 2021-07-19. Retrieved 2025-09-25.
  6. ^ "专访社会学家潘毅：离不开苹果的我们，可以为富士康工人做什么？" [Interview with Sociologist Pan Yi: What Can We Do for Foxconn Workers When We Can't Live Without Apple?]. 端傳媒 (in Simplified Chinese). 2017-09-16. Retrieved 2025-09-25.
  7. ^ 朱柔若 (2014). "富士康與血汗工廠之間：一個集體行為研究取向的解析" [The Foxconn Suicides and the Sweatshop Allegations: A Theoretical Approach of Collective Behavior] (PDF). 展望與探索月刊. 12 (1): 1–5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-07-23.
  8. ^ "挑战苹果的人" [People Challenging Apple]. 财经. Archived from the original on 2017-09-19. Retrieved 2016-05-28.
  9. ^ "未完的抗爭：深圳佳士工人維權事件始末". 端傳媒 (in Traditional Chinese). 2018-09-16. Archived from the original on 2025-01-19. Retrieved 2025-09-26.
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