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China’s economic success has been founded partly on relatively cheap labour, especially in the export industries. In recent years, however, there has been growing concern about wages and labour standards in China. This book examines how wages are bargained, fought over and determined in China, by exploring how the pattern of labour conflict has changed over time since the 1970s. It focuses in particular on the city of Shenzhen where labour conflict and workers’ protests have been especially prevalent. This book includes a detailed account of the transformation of labour relations and labour policy in China more broadly during 2004 to 2009, a period when there have been significant changes in the labour market, labour regulation and labour relations. The author argues that these recent developments have brought to the fore the class basis of workers’ protest in China and have thoroughly undermined the post-Marxist analysis of identity politics. The book makes an invaluable contribution to studies on industry and labour, as well as Chinese studies. \"Chris King-Chi Chan’s book is a particularly well-informed work of scholarship on the process of working-class formation among rural migrant workers in Shenzhen... should prove invaluable both for scholars versed in the study of contemporary China and for those interested in labour politics and urban change in transitional societies.\" - Eric Florence, Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies, University of Liege, Belgium; Local Economy, 26(5) \"Why do workers go on strike? How are the strikes organized? How do the strikes affect employers, workers and the government? And what are the implications of the strikes for the future of workers and labour movement in China? In this highly original book, Chris King-Chi Chan answers these questions based on intensive field research in Shenzhen and reveals an emerging picture of ‘class struggle without class organization’ in China. This is a timely and welcome contribution to the field of China labour studies... Chan should be applauded for providing us with valuable insights into workers’ struggles in China. This excellent ethnography study is a must-read for anyone who is interested in Chinese labour issues.\" - Mingwei Liu, Rutgers University; British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50:1 March 2012 \"Chris Chan provides an amazing variety of first-hand information giving detailed insights into the working conditions, discourses and struggles of migrant workers in China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen.\" - Günter Schucher, GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg; THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 67 \"[T]his book’s rich documentation of a transformative moment in labour relations makes it a valuable addition to the study of labour in China.\" - Mark W. Frazier; The China Quarterly, 207, September 2011 1. Introduction: Globalisation and Chinese Migrant Workers 2. Labour Conflict in Shen Zhen: a Historical Review 3. Community and Shop Floor Culture: a Prelude to Workers' Protests 4. Strikes and Changing Power Relations in the Workplace 5. Workplace Conflict, Legal Institution, and Labour Regime 6. International Civil Society, Chinese Trade Unionism, and Workplace Representation 7. Conclusion: Workers' Struggle and the Changing Regime in China Chris King-Chi Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Social Science at the City University of Hong Kong, and is an active member of labour NGOs in Hong Kong and on mainland China. He gained his PhD at the University of Warwick, UK, and previously worked as a trade union organiser in Hong Kong.

In this study, we argue that the specific process of the proletarianization of Chinese migrant workers contributes to the recent rise of labour protests. Most of the collective actions involve workers' conflict with management at the point of production, while simultaneously entailing labour organizing in dormitories and communities. The type of living space, including workers' dormitories and migrant communities, facilitates collective actions organized not only on bases of locality, ethnicity, gender and peer alliance in a single workplace, but also on attempts to nurture workers' solidarity in a broader sense of a labour oppositional force moving beyond exclusive networks and ties, sometimes even involving cross-factory strike tactics. These collective actions are mostly interest-based, accompanied by a strong anti-foreign capital sentiment and a discourse of workers' rights. By providing detailed cases of workers' strikes in 2004 and 2007, we suggest that the making of a new working class is increasingly conscious of and participating in interest-based or class-oriented labour protests.

Economic upgrading (EU) is being undertaken in China to address numerous problems. However, its social consequences have not received considerable attention. This study selects the Pearl River Delta, where EU is prominent, to examine whether and how workers have benefited from EU process. The data used are from the 2012 and 2014 China Labor-force Dynamic Survey and self-conducted interviews, both of which cover measurable standards and enabling rights of workers. Based on the results of direct comparison and linear/logistic regression, this study argues that EU has a positive effect on social upgrading (SU) because state intervention and regulation play a shaping role in balancing the EU and SU. China’s state has achieved a good balance among its roles of facilitation, regulation, and distribution. Compared to SU on enabling rights, SU on measurable standards is likely to occur because measurable standards are easily quantified and observed and thus are at the center of workers’ occupational conditions at this stage. The state is inclined to pay more attention to measurable standards than enabling rights. The mechanism through which local states interfere with different aspects of SU considerably varies. Local states adopt flexible governance to strike the right balance between EU and SU.

Since China's economic reform began in 1978, millions of migrant workers have moved from inland provinces to coastal cities in search of work. This had led to an abundance of cheap labor and a prevalence of despotic management styles in the private sector since the 1980s. This scenario changed significantly from the 2000s with the proliferation of workers' strikes and the efforts of the party-state to regulate workplace relations. Against this backdrop, scholars have debated about the extent to which labor relations in China have changed, and where they may be heading. As a contribution to this debate, this special issue brings together six articles with strong empirical evidence to unpack the complexity and dynamics of workers' struggles and organizations in South China in the context of a changing political economy. Going beyond the polarization of an optimistic vision on labor movements, and a pessimistic view that emphasizes state power, we pay equal attention to the power of state institutions and workers' agency in shaping labor relations during the past four decades.

The article investigates whether and how economic upgrading leads to social upgrading for rural migrant workers (RMWs) in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of China. Two cities that represent different types of economic upgrading in the PRD, namely Shenzhen and Foshan, were selected as the investigation sites. The data were mainly obtained from statistical yearbooks and interviews with 72 informants, including RMWs, scholars, employers, and officials. The article argues that two types of economic upgrading, namely reindustrialization and tertiarization, affect the social upgrading of RMWs in different ways. However, both types of economic upgrading have caused a pushing-out effect by increasing unemployment or working intensity and living costs.

This article examines the relations between official trade unions and labor NGOs in South China. Previous studies on Chinese labor NGOs have focused on their roles in empowering workers (optimistic vs. pessimistic views) and the strategies of the party-state to deal with them (exclusion and incorporation), but one important point has been missing from the literature: the pressure labor NGOs place on the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) to reform itself. Based on two case studies of local trade union innovation projects in South China, this article demonstrates how the local branches of the ACFTU have innovated in their ways of servicing and organizing migrant workers, including taking initiatives similar to those of labor NGOs. These innovation projects have attempted to reclaim the ＂territories＂ of trade unions, which have been deeply contested by labor activism in the past two decades.

China's global economic strength is underpinned by its manufacturing prowess, predicated on a disciplined, skilled but relatively low‐paid workforce. Hence the State's recent regulatory initiatives to improve employment conditions in response to growing labour unrest. In their introductory article, the coordinators of this Special Issue of the International Labour Review contextualize the contributions that follow by reviewing the broader debates on labour regulation in global production – particularly on “soft” vs “hard” regulation – and the changes that have occurred in China's labour markets, labour regulations, labour standards and labour relations over the past decade. They conclude with suggestions for further research.

2010 was a turbulent year for labour relations in China. The wave of strikes sparked by the Honda workers has highlighted the urgent need for trade union reform and workplace collective bargaining. In response to this turbulence, the Chinese government has stepped up efforts to promote the practice of collective bargaining, which had been neglected under the existing “individual rights-based” labour regulatory framework. In the midst of rapid social and policy changes, this article aims to examine the effect of labour strikes on the development of collective bargaining in China. The authors argue that, driven by growing labour protests, the collective negotiation process in China is undergoing a transition, from “collective consultation as a formality,” through a stage of “collective bargaining by riot,” and towards “party state-led collective bargaining.” This transition, however, is unlikely to reach the stage of “worker-led collective bargaining” in the near future.

This article analyzes the process of working-class formation under the ongoing industrialization in China by studying how the trade union has been contested by migrant workers in their strikes in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) over the past three decades. The cases presented here are emblematic of workers' struggles that have aroused public attention in the specific period of analysis. The author suggests that the trade union as a class organization has been a contested domain for migrant workers' struggles in the PRD. Through their collective actions, workers' class consciousness and strategies towards class organization have steadily advanced in the process of China's integration into the global economy.

In 2010, labour protests spread across China, sparked by the Honda workers' strike. Hoping to pacify the aggrieved workers, the Shenzhen and Guangdong governments resumed discussion of the suspended draft Shenzhen Collective Consultation Ordinance and the Guangdong Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises. However, following strong opposition from foreign chambers of commerce, discussion was once again suspended. The authors show that two factors determine how foreign chambers of commerce and government agencies influence labour legislation in southern China: the position in global production chains of the firms they represent, and the relevant industrial relations model.