In the spring of 2000, China’s huge state-owned oil company PetroChina attempted to sell nearly 10 billion dollars worth of stock on the New York Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Because of widespread violations of labor rights and human rights in China, and concerns about enviornmental damage by the Chinese oil industry and investments by PetroChina’s parent company in war torn Sudan, the IPO ran into a wall of protest. I wrote an article that assessed the impact of this unusal political conflict inside the global capital markets that recently appeared in the Journal of Corporation Law (Vol. 29 at 39 (2003)). Here is a link to an earlier version of this article published in the Cornell Law School working paper series: https://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=cornell/clsops.

Dramatic changes in the Chinese economy are having a major impact on workers and the international labor movement. Here is a link to a book review I wrote for Dissent magazine on two excellent new books on the nature of economic change underway in China today. The review is entitled: The Chinese Market: An Enigma Unraveled. The URL is: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/archives/2002/su02/diamond2.shtml

This website aims to provide a source of news, analysis and debate on developments in the global economy with particular emphasis on the impact of the economy on global labor. With the end of the Cold War some fifteeen years ago the terrain upon which the labor movement defends its interests has changed radically. New terrain requires new understanding. I will try to make available to visitors to this site news, research and debates that I encounter in the course of my own work that I think might be helpful to those who are trying to make sense of these same developments. I will welcome constructive contributions from others as well.