Elaine Sio-Ieng Hui

The Dynamics and Dilemma of Workplace Trade Union Reform in China: The Case of the Honda Workers’ Strike:

Based on a case study of the Honda workers’ strike and its impact on workplace industrial relations, this article explores the potential of and barriers to workplace trade union reform in China. A rise in workers’ collective actions has put political pressure on the All China Federation of Trade Unions to promote effective trade unionism and create a vital foundation for exercising democratic union representation in the workplace. The main barrier to effective workplace unionism, however, is the lack of external support for workers’ unionization efforts. On the one hand, the lower-level local trade unions fail to comply with their legal responsibility because of their bureaucratic nature and structural integration into the patron–client relationship between the local state and the global capital. On the other hand, support for workers from civil society is handicapped by the party-state’s opposition to independent labour organizing. This dilemma has forced the higher trade union federation to intervene directly in workplace trade union reform and promote state-led wage bargaining.

The Development of Collective Bargaining in China: From “Collective Bargaining by Riot” to “Party State-led Wage Bargaining”

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.

Bringing Class Struggles Back: A Marxian Analysis of the State and Class Relations in China

ABSTRACT This article finds both the ‘weakening-state’ hypothesis of neo-liberalism and the ‘state as autonomous actor’ approach adopted by many current China studies dissatisfying towards an understanding of the Chinese state. The authors have therefore conducted a Marxian investigation of the Chinese state. We argue that the state is socially embedded; it is the field and condensation of class struggle. The gulf separating global capital and internal migrant workers on interests such as wage standards, pensions, and other labour regulations in China is a major form of class struggle, which continues to shape the state’s policies and behaviours. The attack on Chinese workers by global capital after the global economic crisis in 2008 precipitated a new wave of migrant worker protests and contributed to their articulation of worker demands on the Chinese state. To substantiate these arguments, we examine the (global) capital and (migrant) labour relations during and after the global economic crisis in 2008, with detailed analysis of the Honda strike and Yue Yuen strike, which took place in 2010 and 2014, respectively. The central theme is that the Chinese state’s development and labour policies can be fully comprehended only by bringing class struggle back into the analysis.

The Influence of Overseas Business Associations on Law-making in China: A Case Study

Through an investigation of the Shenzhen Collective Consultation Ordinance and the Guangdong Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises, this article demonstrates how transnational capital in China deploys its associational power alongside its structural economic power to lobby and pressure the national and local governments to advance its own interests. In addition, building upon the ideas of Hall and Soskice about the varieties of capitalism, the authors have developed the concept of “varieties of transnational capital” to account for the differing positions of overseas business associations regarding the two laws. We find that these positions are shaped by two determining factors: a) where the associations are situated in global production chains, and b) the industrial relations model in their home countries.

The Labour Law System, Capitalist Hegemony and Class Politics in China

This article investigates how the Chinese labour law system has helped to reproduce capitalist hegemony, i.e. the ethico-political, moral and cultural leadership of the ruling class. Based on intensive fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta and 115 interviews with migrant workers, this article shows that the labour law system has exercised a double hegemonic effect with regards to capital–labour relations and state–labour relations. Through normalizing, countervailing, concealing and transmuting mechanisms, the labour law system has been able to buffer both the market economy and the party-state from workers’ radical and fundamental criticism. However, the double hegemony mediated through the labour law system has influenced the Chinese migrant workers in an uneven manner: some of them have granted active consent to the ruling class leadership; some have only rendered passive consent; and some have refused to give any consent at all.