Abstract
This book assesses the potential for labor activism in China to develop into an organized worker’s movement that is capable of challenging communist control.
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Notes
- 1.
A Chinese State is defined as a politically organised community living under the rules of different political leaders in history. The CCP is the political leader to rule China since 1949.
- 2.
The concern among the Hong Kong people with the Extradition Bill is that Hong Kong residents and has been the removal of the separation of the region’s judiciary system from China under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. See Chapter 5.
- 3.
During the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree was routinely performed by pro-democracy protestors as one of their protest songs. As a result, “yellow ribbons” have become a symbol of the movement as well as the self-identity of pro-democracy protestors and supporters. The yellow economic circle is created by the ‘yellow ribbons’ to support the livelihoods of pro-democracy businesses (or ‘yellow shops’).
- 4.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party was a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDLP). The Party was founded by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov in 1905 which consisted of workers. See Shepley, Nick (2013) Russia's Struggle With Modernity 1815–1929, Bedfordshire: Andrews UK Limited.
- 5.
The ‘Open Door’ policy relates to a series of economic modernisation programmes that altered China’s development strategy from one based on self-sufficiency in the Maoist state to one that actively participates in the world market. See Huan, Guocang (1986) ‘China's Open Door Policy, 1978–1984’, China in Transition 39(2): 1–18.
- 6.
The function of the ‘workers’ support team’ was to mobilize workers to participate in demonstrations while the ‘workers’ picket team’ aimed to protect the protesters. The ‘dare-to-die’ corps shared similar tasks with the ‘picket team’ but travelled anywhere to block the retaliatory action by the Chinese military, that is, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), against the protesters during the 1989 Tiananmen movement. See Walder, Andrew (1991) ‘Workers, Managers and the State: The Reform Era and the Political Crisis of 1989’, The China Quarterly 127: 467–492.
- 7.
The term “bourgeois liberalization” is another label for “bourgeois rightists” that described the spreading of unwanted Western—particularly American—influences. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Mao used the label “bourgeois rightists” to attack his perceived capitalist enemies including Deng Xiaoping. See Chapter 2.
- 8.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was formerly called the Red Army prior to 1946. See Grasso, June, Corrin, Jay and Kort, Michael (2009) Modernization and Revolution: From the Opium Wars to the Olympics, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. The Army consisted of Chinese workers and peasants (the masses) which had engaged battles against the Japanese troops during the Second World War (1937–1945) and the Kuomintang (KWT) party in the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949). See Chapter 2 and Li, Xiaobing (2012) China at War: An Encyclopedia, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC.
- 9.
Following the State workers’ protest involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen movement, the CCP leaders enforced the labour standards provisions, including working hours, rest days, minimum wages and overtime penalty rates, to govern the rights and duties between employers and workers under the National Labour Law (1995). In 2008, the CCP enacted the Labour Contract Law (2008) to further regulate the use of employment contracts and also outlined the procedure for collective bargaining and labour dispute resolution. See ACFTU (1997) Labour Law of the People's Republic of China, http://www.acftu.org.cn/template/10002/file.jsp?cid=56&aid=31, accessed 10 September 2012, Lehman (2008) Labour Contract Law of the People's Republic of China, http://www.lehmanlaw.com/fileadmin/lehmanlaw_com/laws___regulations/Labor_Contract_Law_of_the_PRC__LLX__06292007_.pdf, accessed 12 October 2010, Su, Yang and He, Xin (2010) ‘Street as Courtroom: State Accomodation of Labor Protest in South China’, Law & Society Review 44(1): 157–184.
- 10.
These laws were used during the 1989 Tiananmen protests to suppress workers’ attempts to organise an independent labour movement under the twin doctrines of “no crime without a law” and “no punishment without a law” Keith, Ronald and Lin, Zhiqui (2003) ‘The “Falun Gong Problem”: Politics and the Struggle for the Rule of Law in China’, The China Quarterly 175: 623–642, Merchant, Toby (2004) ‘Recognizing ILO Rights to Organize and Bargain Collectively; Grease in China's Transition to a Socialist Market Economy’, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 36(223): 223–253, ITUC (2010) Internationally Recognised Core Labour Standards in the People's Republic of China: Report for teh WTO General Council Review of the Trade Policies of the People's Republic of China, http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/Chinal_Final-2.pdf, accessed 2 November 2012. The Criminal Law of 1987, for example, defined ‘a criminal group’ as a group of three or more people forming a criminal or an illegal organisation to carry out joint criminal activities to harm the society (Articles 14 and 26) UNHRC (1997) Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain?docid=3ae6b5cd2&page=search, accessed 31 October 2012.. In addition, while the new Labour Contract Law (2008) did not specify whether striking was a legal action Wang, Tianyu and Cooke, Fang-Lee (2016) ‘Striking the balance in industrial relations in China? An analysis of court decisions of 897 strike cases (2008–2015)’, Journal of Industral Relations 59(1): 22–43., the regulations under the Assembly Law of 1989 stated that demonstrations or assembly activities must not “impair state, public or collective interests” (Article 4) UNHCR (1989) Law of the People's Republic of China on Assemblies, Processions and Demonstrations, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b592e.html, accessed 22 October 2012..
- 11.
China has ratified only four of the eight core ILO’s labour standards, namely the Minimum Age (1973, No.138), Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999, No.182), Equal Remuneration (1951, No.100), Abolition of Forced Labour (1959, No.105) and anti-discrimination (1958, No.111) conventions.
- 12.
Chinese discourse of rights protection is characterized by the acceptance of the laws as the standard by which the clauses such as working conditions and minimum wages have been set. See Benney, Jonathan (2013) Defending Rights in Contemporary China: Reserving the Right, New York: Routledge. See Chan, Anita and Siu, Kaxton (2012) Chinese Migrant Workers: Factors Constraining the Emergence of Class Consciousness. in Beatriz Carrillo and David Goodman (eds.) China's Peasants and Workers: Changing Class Identities. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
- 13.
Filing labour dispute arbitration with the local labour bureau is the prerequisite for filing civil lawsuits. See Friedman, Eli and Lee, Ching Kwan (2010) ‘Remaking the World of Chinese Labour: A 30-Year Retrospective’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 48(3): 507–533.
- 14.
In accordance with Article 81 of the Labour Contract Law (2008), the Labour Arbitration Committee is established at the county, municipality and district levels. See Chen, Ke (2011) Labour Law in China, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law International BV. The Labour Arbitration Committee is composed of representatives of the local Labour Bureau (or labour administrative department) and the trade union as well as the government staff and lawyers as full-time or part-time arbitrators where the Committee is chaired by the responsible person in charge of the local labour administrative department. See Hunter, Christopher, Lam, Louisa and Lin, Ketong (2008) Employment Law in China, Hong Kong: CCH Hong Kong Limited.
- 15.
Henan province was one of the top four provinces (next to the three other SOE concentrated locations of Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces) in terms of the number of SOE workers that faced with wage arrears. With 640,000 of 4.13 million SOE workers laid off, Henan’s province’s unemployment rate was reported as the third highest in the country, next to Liaoning and Heilongjiang. See Chen, Feng (2000) ‘Subsistence Crises, Managerial Corruption and Labour Protests in China’, The China Journal 44: 41–63.
- 16.
Contrary to a class-for-itself, a class-in-itself is constituted by the production structure without becoming discursively aware (or conscious) of its own position (or identity) within the capitalist system. Thus, it is argued that a class-in-itself is formed without class identity and hence is incapable of engaging in class-based action to defend the rights and interests of workers. See Research Background, p. 23 and Haugaard, Mark (1997) The Constitution of Power: A Theoretical Analysis of Power, Knowledge and Structure, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- 17.
The concept of ‘rightful resistance’ is originally developed by Kelvin O’Brien to describe legal rights defense by Chinese protesters. See O'Brien, Kevin (1996) ‘Rightful Resistance’, World Politics 49: 31–55.
- 18.
Government slaves were referred to as gongren 宮人 in Imperial China. See Wagner, Donald (1998) A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang, New York: Routledge.
- 19.
The term everyday workers refers to those who sell their labour in exchange for a living wage. The term is interchangeable with that of ordinary workers, see Munck, Ronaldo (2004) Introduction: Globalisation and Labour Transnationalism. in Ronaldo Munck (ed.) Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Ordinary workers refer to those skilled and unskilled wage labourers, male or female, across different occupations and industry types and sizes in the labour market. I chose to use the term everyday workers for this study to emphasize the lived experiences of workers, that is, their everyday experiences within and outside the production process as being the workers, to understand both their work and the way workers live. See Thompson, E.P. (1966) The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Vintage Books..
- 20.
Mandarin (or Putonghua) and Chinese simplified character is the only official form of Chinese language that acknowledged by the CCP in China; while Chinese Cantonese is the official spoken Chinese language with Chinese traditional character as the official form written language in Hong Kong that is used in education, broadcasting, government administration as well as daily communication. Apart from Cantonese, I learnt Mandarin from my parents. They were born in Indonesia where Mandarin was their native language used in Chinese community before migrating to Hong Kong.
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Leung, E. (2021). Introduction: Debates on Workers’ Consciousness Development in China. In: The (Re)Making of the Chinese Working Class . Palgrave Debates in Business History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83313-8_1
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