JennyChan.PhDThesis.2014.FINAL

Chapter 2
The Labor Politics of Global Production
Labor politics begins with the laborers themselves: their geographical
origins, gender, popular culture, educational attainments, work
experiences, and the like. These are the features of a worker’s milieu
that structure lasting traditions of collective action.
—Elizabeth Perry 62
This research, following Elizabeth Perry’s analytical approach, begins with workers’
defense of their own interests and their collective actions. Before the founding of the
Chinese Communist Party in 1921 or the involvement of Marxist intellectuals and
students in labor organizing at the turn of the 20 th century, workers and other socially
subordinate groups (such as peasants) had long created their own traditions and
protest repertories to safeguard their collective interests. 63 This chapter draws on
historical and sociological literature to analyze workers’ subjectivities and persistent
efforts in changing their socio-political and economic conditions.
As China emerged as the “workshop of the world” with a shift of manufacturing
from the developed countries of North American, Europe and East Asia to China and
other developing countries, China has arguably become the “epicenter of world labor
unrest” in the wake of global outsourcing and transnational manufacturing. 64 In
response to growing numbers of labor protests since the early 1990s, the state,
central and local, has attempted to fragment workers’ identities, class interests, and
mobilization efforts, and achieved some degree of success. 65 Workers’ associational
power remains weak, as official trade unions are politically restrained from leading
strikes and protests. Tim Pringle however reminds us: “The absence of independent
trade unions does not automatically preclude working class influence on most
62 Elizabeth J. Perry, 1993, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor, Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press, pp. 4-5.
63 Ho-fung Hung, 2011, Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions
in the Mid-Qing Dynasty, New York: Columbia University Press.
64 For discussions on labor politics in the Chinese automobile industry, see Beverly J. Silver and Lu
Zhang, 2009, “China as an Emerging Epicenter of World Labour Unrest,” China and the
Transformation of Global Capitalism, edited by Ho-fung Hung, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, pp. 174-87.
65 Ching Kwan Lee, 2010, “Pathways of Labor Activism,” Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and
Resistance, edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, London: Routledge, pp. 57-79; Ching
Kwan Lee and Yonghong Zhang, 2013, “The Power of Instability: Unraveling the Microfoundations
of Bargained Authoritarianism in China,” American Journal of Sociology 118(6), pp. 1475-508; Ching
Kwan Lee, 2014, “State and Social Protest,” Daedalus: The Journal of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences 143(2), pp. 124-34.
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