Social Science Research Council

"Globalization, Market Reform and the Dynamics of Labor Unrest in China, 1980-2005: A Case Study of the Chinese Automobile Industry"

Over the past two decades, the Chinese automobile industry has grown dramatically, fueled largely by massive foreign investment through joint ventures. While the total output exceeded 5.7 million vehicles by 2005, making China the world’s third largest automobile producer, the number of employees in the auto sector declined from 2 million to 1.5 million from 1994 to 2001. This is mainly due to the massive layoffs by many state-owned auto enterprises under China’s market reform. Moreover, by the late 1990s, Taylorism and related principles for maximizing profits at the workplace had become generalized practice in major auto enterprises in China. These radical changes can be expected to have a significant impact on labor-management relations in the Chinese automobile industry.

The specific aims of this project are: (1) to examine the shop-floor dynamics of labor-management relations and the system of labor control in the Chinese automobile industry; (2) to map the forms and the trajectories of Chinese autoworkers’ unrest during the post-reform era; and (3) to identify the broader local, national and global processes that are influencing the dynamics of labor relations at the point of production.

Specific hypotheses on the changing labor relations and dynamics of labor unrest in China are laid out in the dissertation research and will be assessed through intense fieldwork at five major auto assembly enterprises across different ownership types and geographic locations in China. I will spend two months at each company, visiting production lines, doing direct observations at shop floors, interviewing workers, managers, and factory union staff and collecting company files. My fieldwork will allow me to develop a concrete picture of the shop-floor dynamics of labor control; the interactions between managers, formal workers and temporary workers; and the ways in which labor relations in China have changed over the last two decades.