Chinese state-enterprise reform: economic transition, labour unrest and worker representation.

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Chinese state-enterprise reform: economic transition, labour unrest and worker representation.

Introduction

This article examines the ways in which workers in China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have responded to the changing nature of those enterprises during the reform period since 1978. In particular, we assess the causes of the rising incidences of labour unrest among SOE employees from the second half of the 1990s onwards, as drastic restructuring of the state sector began to take place and unemployment reached its highest levels in China for decades. Protests over lay-offs, bankruptcies and unpaid wages and pensions reached a stage in which elements of the reform programme became threatened with delay, as local and national governments sought to contain workers' resentment. Yet, as will he seen in this paper, sometimes these efforts to mollify workers succeeded only in further stoking their anger at what they perceived to be patronising and token concessions that did not address their most important concerns.

The intention of the analysis developed in this paper is to examine the tensions between state capitalism and state corporatism in the relationship between the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and urban industrial workers. In particular, we explain how the CCP has responded to labour pressure for better industrial and political representation since the late-1980s.

The Chinese government has shown particular concern over attempts to form independent labour organisations in this period, seeking instead to contain an increasingly restive working class, now subject to a high level of employment insecurity, within the framework of state-controlled unionism. We argue that the CCP's relaxation of centralised control over a more open, 'mixed' economy has not been matched in the area of labour representation by a greater tolerance of autonomous organisation, leading to intensifying conflict with labour, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas of the country.

Structured in the form of a contemporary historical account informed by labour-process analysis, we offer a contemporary narrative that documents the evolving relationships between workers, official trade unions, SOE management and the state. The evidence for our arguments is distilled from, on the one hand, information gathered during visits to state-owned steel companies in the process of implementing economic reforms, (1) and on the other, from archival/textual materials on the practices and effects of SOE restructuring, notable among which are specialist publications on the Chinese economy as well as news media, and company and state literature.

Whither SOE workers?

SOE workers have conventionally been viewed as being a very privileged group within Chinese society--an elite section of the workforce amply compensated for its still relatively low wage levels by the ben...

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