Jiangsu

In a separate incident, a Japanese national in China was injured after being beaten with a stone-like object in July last year.

She was with her child when the attack happened in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

It remains unclear whether she was targeted because she was Japanese.

In July, the head of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce in Industry in China said Japanese nationals there still feel wary of their safety.

And that's an issue Chinese exporters are facing as their trade increases with these countries.

I was born and raised in Jiangsu province where

there are a lot of export businesses, bags, shirts.

At that point of time, people never think about collecting money because they always want to sell stuff.

It all started with the Jing emperor and his trusted number one advisor, the politician and literary figure Cao Cao.

Cao Cao had put a bug in the emperor's ear that if they didn't strike now against these seven princes, especially the prince of the rich Wu state in Jiangsu, later they would most certainly rise in revolt.

So it was better to strike now rather than to wait and be struck.

Emperor Jing instituted a series of passive-aggressive measures that essentially enforced all kinds of laws from the past that were on the books but that the princes all these years had ignored.

Enter the Red Eyebrows, or the Chürmei.

The Red Eyebrows, as their name suggests, had eyebrows that were painted red.

They were initially a secret society operating mostly out of Shandong and northern Jiangsu, who grew rapidly in the wake of all the well-intentioned but failed policies of Wang Mang.

The uprising grew fast, and like they sometimes do, it became unstoppable.

Turning to our final topic today, we track an emerging development within the Chinese labor force that aims to secure leverage in ongoing labor disputes and advocate for increased worker rights.

Uh, several researchers have been following a labor dispute at Xingyu Automotive Lighting, a publicly traded car lamp maker in Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, where highly skilled workers have complained not only to domestic authorities, but to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and other avenues where Xingyu is seeking another public listing, as well as to customers of vehicle manufacturers that source their lighting components, including Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, which have since prompted responses from each of the major manufacturers.

Uh, but before we get too far into the story, Miles, what exactly is this new tactic? And walk us through the chronology here with the Xingyu dispute.

China is a world workshop.

You mentioned Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW in particular.

So they're making very good ones, but they are based upon the sweat work of the workers.

So this particular case, uh, Xingyu is a company, uh, based in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, and they recruited, uh, highly educated graduates for research and development positions, and technical, very technical.

They're well-trained.

The dynasty's presence in Shanghai was real, but strange.

A government of Jiangsu in exile from Jiangsu camped in the one corner of the province the war had not quite reached yet.

Xue Huan held, in an acting capacity, the governorship that had belonged until June 2nd to Xu Youzhen, and we know how that vacancy had opened.

The working center of it was Wu Xu, the Shanghai Daotai, or circuit intendant, the official whose office had spent two decades learning to live with the foreigners, which in practice made him the indispensable hinge between Qing authority and everyone who actually had the power in the city.

They'd landed at the end of July at Beitang, a few miles up the coast from the forts at Dagu, where Frederick Bruce's mission had been bloodily repulsed the year before, which this time they declined to force from the water at all.

On August 21st, the very day of the letter, they took the forts from the landward side, and the road to Tianjin, and then Beijing itself, lay open before the Anglo-French army once again at war with the Qing dynasty itself.

To scope back and take in the full shape of it, that week in August 1860, on the coast of Jiangsu, British and French soldiers killed the dynasty's enemies to protect the dynasty's own ports.

On the coast of Zhili, British and French soldiers killed the dynasty's own troops to break open the dynasty's capital.

Now, around the time Liu Bang was ascending, we're talking 210, 209, 207 BC thereabouts, the time period when the empire Qin Shi Huang cobbled together was starting to quickly unravel.

Liu Bang came from Fengxian, about a 90-minute drive north from present-day Xuzhou in Jiangsu province.

Back in Liu Bang's time, it was called Pei County.

He was a nobody living in Pei County when this wealthy and respectable lord moved to the town.

He was admired by those who served under him as a warrior and a giant of a man, both physically and in the manner of his will.

Sima Qian couldn't rave enough about this guy and the accomplishments of Xiang Yu in the record of the Grand Historian.

He was born about 100 kilometers to the east of Xuzhou in what is present-day Suqian County in Jiangsu.

Xiang Yu had declared himself the Xi Chu Bawang, or the hegemon or lord protector of western Chu state.