Excerpt] This book, then, seeks to address a problem of the political economy of early twenty-fir... more Excerpt] This book, then, seeks to address a problem of the political economy of early twenty-first-century China: Why is it that in the more than ten years since the central government began to shift away from fullfledged marketization, migrant worker unrest has continued to grow apace? Why have the efforts of certain segments of the state to promote class compromise largely failed? Perhaps one might assume that the answer is simply that there has been collusion between the local state and capital, unions are weak, and therefore worker interests continue to be violated. Indeed, there is strong evidence that even if migrant workers' nominal wages increased in this period, the workers did not experience significant increases in real wages, and their wages relative to those of urban workers steadily declined (Golley and Meng 2011). But if this is the case, a second question immediately arises: Why is it that labor is strong enough to win concessions at the national and sometimes provincial or municipal level but not strong enough to allow migrant workers to significantly benefit from these victories or gain their recognition? In broad terms, I am interested in identifying what is particular about the labor politics of capitalist industrialization in a postsocialist political environment. In order to answer these questions, I focus on the state-controlled unions under the umbrella of the ACFTU and their relationship to migrant workers, capital, and other state agencies.
In recent years, scholars have begun to document the emergence of private migrant schools in urba... more In recent years, scholars have begun to document the emergence of private migrant schools in urban China. However, neither education nor labor scholars have empirically investigated teachers' work. Because it is precisely those with the fewest economic resources that have been restricted to privatized education in the city, migrant schools are dependent on a highly exploitative form of employment. Based on a study of Guangzhou and Beijing, we see that there is diversity in working conditions. In Beijing, teachers are subject to extralegal precarity in which basic legal enforcement is tenuous to nonexistent. In Guangzhou, there is greater legal compliance, but management has employed market discipline to shift risk onto teachers. In general, teachers' work in migrant schools is similar to other forms of migrant labor in China, characterized by low pay, long hours, high work intensity, and lack of job security. The article concludes by assessing the divergent politics of migration in each city while considering the implications for socioeconomic inequality.
In this article I argue that the Chinese state is responding to tensions wrought by high-speed gr... more In this article I argue that the Chinese state is responding to tensions wrought by high-speed growth by attempting to develop a form of technocratic biopolitics I refer to as 'just-in-time (JIT) urbanization'. Mirroring techniques of the Toyota Production System (of which JIT is a constituent element), large Chinese cities have sought to avoid the costs associated with the production and warehousing of surplus populations. Under this system, migrants are granted access to local citizenship and public education for their children if they fulfill a specific, state-determined, need in the labor market. The hope is to be able to precisely deploy specific kinds of labor power as needed, at as low a cost as possible, while avoiding waste, overpopulation, and (presumed) attendant political chaos. The social consequence of this approach is that nominally public resources such as education have been funneled to elites in what I term an 'inverted means test'.
In this introduction to the special issue 'Changing work, labour and employment relations in Chin... more In this introduction to the special issue 'Changing work, labour and employment relations in China', we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region and sector. We note some countervailing tendencies towards re-centralization, but emphasize that this phenomenon remains largely confined to the municipal level. The five articles in this special issue address different aspects of both experimentation and decentralization in labor relations.
Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour m... more Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of 'alienated politics'. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm because of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive capacity of the state, the central government has in fact responded to highly localized resistance by passing generally pro-labour legislation over the past decade. The consequence of this is that worker unrest has produced important political shifts at the national level, but these have come about without workers' direct involvement in the process. In other words, workers are alienated from the political object that they themselves have produced. As a consequence, when the state intervenes in labour politics, it appears to be doing so of its own accord, i.e. paternalistically. This framework helps us to understand how worker unrest in China has become highly antagonistic towards employers and the local state, while maintaining the stability of the system as a whole.
Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic ... more Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi’s theory of the coutermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined “moments”: the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus far been confounded by conditions of “appropriated representation,” where the only worker organizations allowed to exist are those within the state-run All China Federation of Trade Unions. However, in drawing on two case studies of strikes in capital-intensive industries in Guangdong province, I show that the relationship between insurgency and institutionalization shifted between 2007 and 2010.
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces, the author asks how... more Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces, the author asks how postsocialist unions respond to worker unrest and why the development of sectoral-level bargaining has been uneven in different regions of China. While Zhejiang has had relative success in establishing the organizational infrastructure for sectoral bargaining, Guangdong has had little success despite ongoing attempts by unions. The author explains variation in sectoral-level bargaining through an analysis of the different models of economic development, which are characterized as local entrepreneurialism and global integration for Zhejiang and Guangdong, respectively. Despite having different organizational forms, unions in both places suffer from a lack of credibility and capacity to enforce contracts. Given the ACFTU's ongoing focus on sectoral-level bargaining, however, experiments will likely continue in various regions and industries throughout China.
How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this resp... more How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor-capital and labor-state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to the streets in increasing numbers. This divergence led to several instances of conflict, and, by 2010, it was possible to detect small but significant shifts in the union's approach to dealing with labor unrest.
Excerpt] This book, then, seeks to address a problem of the political economy of early twenty-fir... more Excerpt] This book, then, seeks to address a problem of the political economy of early twenty-first-century China: Why is it that in the more than ten years since the central government began to shift away from fullfledged marketization, migrant worker unrest has continued to grow apace? Why have the efforts of certain segments of the state to promote class compromise largely failed? Perhaps one might assume that the answer is simply that there has been collusion between the local state and capital, unions are weak, and therefore worker interests continue to be violated. Indeed, there is strong evidence that even if migrant workers' nominal wages increased in this period, the workers did not experience significant increases in real wages, and their wages relative to those of urban workers steadily declined (Golley and Meng 2011). But if this is the case, a second question immediately arises: Why is it that labor is strong enough to win concessions at the national and sometimes provincial or municipal level but not strong enough to allow migrant workers to significantly benefit from these victories or gain their recognition? In broad terms, I am interested in identifying what is particular about the labor politics of capitalist industrialization in a postsocialist political environment. In order to answer these questions, I focus on the state-controlled unions under the umbrella of the ACFTU and their relationship to migrant workers, capital, and other state agencies.
In recent years, scholars have begun to document the emergence of private migrant schools in urba... more In recent years, scholars have begun to document the emergence of private migrant schools in urban China. However, neither education nor labor scholars have empirically investigated teachers' work. Because it is precisely those with the fewest economic resources that have been restricted to privatized education in the city, migrant schools are dependent on a highly exploitative form of employment. Based on a study of Guangzhou and Beijing, we see that there is diversity in working conditions. In Beijing, teachers are subject to extralegal precarity in which basic legal enforcement is tenuous to nonexistent. In Guangzhou, there is greater legal compliance, but management has employed market discipline to shift risk onto teachers. In general, teachers' work in migrant schools is similar to other forms of migrant labor in China, characterized by low pay, long hours, high work intensity, and lack of job security. The article concludes by assessing the divergent politics of migration in each city while considering the implications for socioeconomic inequality.
In this article I argue that the Chinese state is responding to tensions wrought by high-speed gr... more In this article I argue that the Chinese state is responding to tensions wrought by high-speed growth by attempting to develop a form of technocratic biopolitics I refer to as 'just-in-time (JIT) urbanization'. Mirroring techniques of the Toyota Production System (of which JIT is a constituent element), large Chinese cities have sought to avoid the costs associated with the production and warehousing of surplus populations. Under this system, migrants are granted access to local citizenship and public education for their children if they fulfill a specific, state-determined, need in the labor market. The hope is to be able to precisely deploy specific kinds of labor power as needed, at as low a cost as possible, while avoiding waste, overpopulation, and (presumed) attendant political chaos. The social consequence of this approach is that nominally public resources such as education have been funneled to elites in what I term an 'inverted means test'.
In this introduction to the special issue 'Changing work, labour and employment relations in Chin... more In this introduction to the special issue 'Changing work, labour and employment relations in China', we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region and sector. We note some countervailing tendencies towards re-centralization, but emphasize that this phenomenon remains largely confined to the municipal level. The five articles in this special issue address different aspects of both experimentation and decentralization in labor relations.
Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour m... more Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of 'alienated politics'. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm because of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive capacity of the state, the central government has in fact responded to highly localized resistance by passing generally pro-labour legislation over the past decade. The consequence of this is that worker unrest has produced important political shifts at the national level, but these have come about without workers' direct involvement in the process. In other words, workers are alienated from the political object that they themselves have produced. As a consequence, when the state intervenes in labour politics, it appears to be doing so of its own accord, i.e. paternalistically. This framework helps us to understand how worker unrest in China has become highly antagonistic towards employers and the local state, while maintaining the stability of the system as a whole.
Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic ... more Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi’s theory of the coutermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined “moments”: the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus far been confounded by conditions of “appropriated representation,” where the only worker organizations allowed to exist are those within the state-run All China Federation of Trade Unions. However, in drawing on two case studies of strikes in capital-intensive industries in Guangdong province, I show that the relationship between insurgency and institutionalization shifted between 2007 and 2010.
Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces, the author asks how... more Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces, the author asks how postsocialist unions respond to worker unrest and why the development of sectoral-level bargaining has been uneven in different regions of China. While Zhejiang has had relative success in establishing the organizational infrastructure for sectoral bargaining, Guangdong has had little success despite ongoing attempts by unions. The author explains variation in sectoral-level bargaining through an analysis of the different models of economic development, which are characterized as local entrepreneurialism and global integration for Zhejiang and Guangdong, respectively. Despite having different organizational forms, unions in both places suffer from a lack of credibility and capacity to enforce contracts. Given the ACFTU's ongoing focus on sectoral-level bargaining, however, experiments will likely continue in various regions and industries throughout China.
How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this resp... more How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor-capital and labor-state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to the streets in increasing numbers. This divergence led to several instances of conflict, and, by 2010, it was possible to detect small but significant shifts in the union's approach to dealing with labor unrest.
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