China as an Emerging Epicenter of World Labor Unrest (original) (raw)
Related papers
RS29F Labour unrest in China (2003)
U K Defence Forum, 2003
Rising labour unrest in the People's Republic is proving ever more serious for Beijing (Spring 2003). This should come as little surprise - China has, after all, sought to achieve in just decades the economic development it took Western Europe centuries to reach. And Beijing's attempt to leapfrog from a society dependent on agriculture, to one driven by enterprise, has inevitably led to agricultural and industrial casualties.
Chinese Labor Protest and Trade Unions
Routledge eBooks, 2015
Foxconn Technology Group, a Taiwanese-owned transnational corporation founded in Taipei in 1974, holds more than 50 percent of the market share in global electronics manufacturing. 1 Its 1.4 million workers in China are comprised mostly of rural migrants in their late teens to twenties. This chapter considers their struggle for labor rights, the nature of union representation at the giant firm, and the joint responsibility of the enterprise and government for the protection of workers. Yu Zhonghong (a pseudonym), a 21-year-old worker-protestor, sent an open letter to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, which ended with three reminders (the letter is on file with the authors, our translation):
The Changing Nature of Labor Unrest in China
Industrial & Labor Relations Review, 2014
A qualitative shift is underway in the nature of labor protest in China. Contrary to prior literature that characterized strikes as being largely defensive in nature, the authors suggest that since 2008, Chinese workers have been striking offensively for more money, better working conditions, and more respect from employers. They explain these developments using a “political process” model that suggests economic and political opportunities are sending “cognitive cues” to workers that they have increased leverage, leading them to be more assertive in their demands. Such cues include a growing labor shortage, new labor laws, and new media openness. Their argument is supported by a unique data set of strikes that the authors collected, two case studies of strikes in aerospace factories, and interviews with a variety of employment relations stakeholders.
2012
Based on a review of divergent interpretations of migrant-worker protests in China, this article analyzes strike patterns during labor struggles in the summer of 2010. The analysis reveals (1) a shift toward more offensive demands for wage increases and (2) a high level of strike contagion. While these elements were evident to some extent in earlier struggles, the authors see their specific combination in 2010 as an indicator of an ongoing process of “class formation.” The strikes were centered on auto supplier factories, however, and this shows the limitations on cross-sector protest due to the fragmented conditions in China's heterogeneous industrial structure and a continuing ban on independent organization. Taking a broader perspective on the peculiarities of the strike movement, the authors discuss the impact on the government's comparably permissive stance toward the strike movement. This stance created favorable conditions for the proliferation of strikes. Attempts by state authorities to institutionalize worker conflict, while legitimizing the demand for higher wages, fall short of granting rights to organize independently and bargain collectively. Instead an opening has been created for worker militancy rather than integrating it into some authoritarian form of social compromise.
Worker struggles and factory occupation in China during the current economic crisis
Social Movement Studies, 2016
As China's economy continues to slow down after two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labour protests have erupted across the world's most populous workers state. In the face of slumping demand, frequent layoffs, factory relocations and shutdowns have triggered wildcat strikes and disruptive protests over wages, jobs and social protection. These mobilizations are escalated by the failure of local governments to enforce labour laws; however, these disruptions do not attempt to make broad-based demands or attack the ruling Communist Party. During the economic crisis, factory occupation has re-emerged as a protest tactic and created ad hoc spaces of collective discussion, self-management and worker solidarity. Yet since factory occupation is physically bounded and isolated from other struggles, it is more vulnerable to state repression. As the crisis deepens, it remains to be seen if workers' frustration with state governance can still be limited to purely survival issues, without leading to a new politicization and the formation of a generalized opposition to the state.
Labour Unrest in the Global Political Economy: The Case of China's 2010 Strike Wave
This paper argues that whilst the relationship between US consumerism and China’s low-wage production has underpinned China’s economic growth in recent years, policy-makers are increasingly cognisant of heightened internal and external vulnerabilities, namely increased domestic social unrest and down- turns in US demand. Despite calls for increased domestic consumption, opinion remains divided as to the extent to which policy-makers will make a genuine departure with China’s export-orientation. This paper argues, however, that the direction of the Chinese political economy will depend much on the transformative role of workers’ struggles. Placed in a broader north-east Asian comparative perspective, we argue that China appears to be on the verge of a transition towards a limited labour supply, as evidenced in increasing labour shortages, rising wages costs and new forms of labour unrest. An in-depth case study of the strike at Nanhai Honda in 2010 suggests that China’s migrant workers are beginning to develop a class consciousness and move from reactive to proactive demands. Furthermore, the response of the Chinese state and employers has shifted from one of outright repression to one of accommodation. These trends are likely to be highly significant in terms of China’s uneven integration into the global economy.
The unrest and relative empowerment of the working class in contemporary China
METU Studies in Development, 2019
This paper puts forward three arguments regarding the nature and consequences of China's rising labor unrest. Firstly, China's rapid economic growth in the reform era was made possible by a large reserve army of labor, consisting mainly of semi-proletarianized migrant workers from the countryside. Secondly, the deepening proletarianization of and discrimination against migrant workers in recent years has led to a significant increase in labor movements. Finally, rising labor unrest has resulted in significant wage increases, the relative formalization of labor, and a significant decline in profitability.
Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness
2021
Strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers have been rising over the past decade. The state has addressed a number of grievances, yet has also come down increasingly hard on civil society groups pushing for reform. Why are these two seemingly clashing developments occurring simultaneously? Manfred Elfstrom uses extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis to examine both the causes and consequences of protest. The book adopts a holistic approach, encompassing national trends in worker–state relations, local policymaking processes and the dilemmas of individual officials and activists. Instead of taking sides in the old debate over whether non-democracies like China's are on the verge of collapse or have instead found ways of maintaining their power indefinitely, it explores the daily evolution of autocratic rule. While providing a uniquely comprehensive picture of change in China, this important study proposes a new model of bottom-up change within authoritarian systems mor...
Social Unrest in China (Book chapter in China and EU in Context, 2014)
Palgrave MacMillan, 2014
Social unrest is on the rise in China. Few incidents of public demonstrations, disruptive action or riots occurred in the 1980s, but the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square marked a turning point. In 1993, there were already 8,700 ‘mass inci- dents’ recorded. By 2005, the number had grown tenfold to 87,000. Unofficial data estimated by a researcher at Tsinghua University suggests that there were 180,000 incidents in 2010.1 These figures could easily be interpreted as signs that the days of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule are numbered. However, the number of media outlets has proliferated since the 1990s; and with that, the incentive to report on eye-catching stories has increased. In comparing these incidents with the protests that toppled several authoritarian regimes during the Arab Spring of 2011, a number of significant differences emerge. The scale of most protests in China is much smaller. Protestors are usually a homogenous group, such as peasants, taxi driv- ers, migrant workers or homeowners. Mobilisation across social groups, an important precondition for system-threatening col- lective action, is therefore largely absent. Further, despite rising unrest, the death toll in such activities remains low. Most important, few of these protests are aimed at toppling the regime, even though popular uprisings can do so, as evi- denced in the Arab Spring. Interestingly, rising incidents of social unrest do not correlate with a decrease in the legitimacy of the CCP’s one-party rule.2 Although local officials are heavily criticised for their incompetence and corruption, few people are in favour of regime change. If it is not a sign of an impending regime change or even of a major legitimacy crisis, what does social unrest in China signify? In this chapter, we argue that social unrest should be seen as a form of participation – as a means to communicate specific griev- ances in the hope that local government or the central authorities will address them. Two issues are at stake here: grievances and participation. Although scholars and politicians tend to focus on the former, the latter deserves equal attention. In fact, rising inci- dents of unrest might not be the result of mounting grievances but of changing forms of participation. The growth of informa- tion and communication technology (ICT) in China has brought about improved availability of information on issues at the heart of people’s well-being, such as food quality and environmental pollution. It has also improved the ability of protestors to learn from the success or failure of previous initiatives, and to com- municate their grievances and strategies. In simple terms, the increase in occurrences of social unrest is likely the result of exploitation of material interests of disadvan- taged groups, the inadequacy of formal channels of communica- tion combined with greater opportunities for and falling costs of instigating or participating in social unrest. As we will also show, this does not make social unrest innocu- ous. If the number of protests continues to rise, the perception that grievances are not being adequately addressed may translate into opposition to the regime. Even more likely is a scenario in which security forces overreact, protests spiral out of control, isolated protests link up with each other and large-scale riots are answered with massive repression. Realising these dangers, the Chinese government has begun to address the grievances underlying social unrest. It is also investing considerable resources in improving its ability to control, repress and prevent unrest, while some formal channels for communicating grievances are being improved. This report sheds light on the forms, manifestations and root causes of social unrest and its role in the political system. It also analyses various strategies of the Chinese government for mitigating and countering protests. The section ‘The Changing Nature of Social Unrest’ examines definition, forms, distribu- tion and development of social unrest in China. The next sec- tion ‘Issues Leading to Grievances’ analyses the root causes of rising unrest. The study is based on English- and Chinese-language sources comprising official documents, newspaper reports, sta- tistical yearbooks and scholarly publications as well as data and observations gathered in several weeks of fieldwork in Guangzhou (in February 2010), Shenzhen, Shenyang, Chongqing (in 2003 and 2004), Hefei (in December 2011) and Beijing.
Social Unrest in China: A bird's eye perspective
Studies on protests, demonstrations, strikes and other forms of social unrest in China overwhelmingly study the phenomenon from a micro perspective. Little is known about how protests in China are distributed temporally and spatially, which grievances they address, how many people they involve and how likely they are to meet with repression. Drawing on a dataset of 74.452 protests distributed all over China, this paper provides insights into to these issues. The results show that as a tendency, protests in China are widespread, staged by (migrant) workers, and occur in waves that peak at Chinese New Year, when migrants return home. Another noteworthy phenomenon is a steep increase in protests by home buyers, which now form the second largest category of social unrest in China. This means that protests by members of the middle class are on the rise, which has important implications for regime stability in China. The number of protests against land grabs and evictions has remained constant, yet such protests are less frequent than the literature on these issues suggests. Environmental protests are also few and far between. Most protests aim for financial compensation, but not for substantive rights, and involve less than 30 persons. Repression is especially likely where small, homogeneous groups of people are involved, examples in case being the victims of medical mistreatment or their family members, farmers, and hawkers.