Creative labour in Shanghai: Questions on politics, composition and ambivalence

This article introduces and opens discussion on some of the conditions and ambivalences encountered by the rising creative workforce in Shanghai, through engagement with theories of immaterial labour. Drawing from conversations with several Chinese creative workers, the text aims to provoke thought on the potential for political organisation and resistance within fractalised creative sectors mobilised by high levels of innovation, entrepreneurialism, competition and aspiration. By focusing on processes of subjectivation and desire, it calls for considerations of what might constitute political registers in the Shanghainese creative fields.