Rethinking Socialism and Reform in China. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. ix, 189 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) US$159.00, cloth. ISBN 978-90-04-42174-5.
The topic of Chinese labour politics has been the source of outsized hopes and disappointments. Factory Politics in the People’s Republic of China, an excellent new volume edited by Joel Andreas, translates articles that have appeared in the journal Open Times published by the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, providing a granular view of the country’s shifting workplace dynamics often missing from the news.
Each chapter of Factory Politics is anchored in one or more qualitative case studies. Some involve high-profile incidents. In the final section, for instance, Wang Jianhua and Meng Quan perceptively contrast a Honda strike that caught world attention with a less successful mobilization at Ohm Electronics and a riot at Foxconn’s facility in Taiyuan. Other chapters, such as one by Yu Xiaomin on the effects of different corporate social responsibility codes, address areas of longstanding concern through a close inspection of company work schedules and pay stubs. A study by Liu Ming of a single Xinjiang textile mill from the Mao era through to today offers a micro-level political economy lens on tensions that will be familiar to many readers.
Proceeding in what Andreas describes as “rough chronological order” (2), the book moves gradually from scholarship on the 1950s and 1960s through the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s to the early 2010s, with slight backtracks along the way. As a consequence, it dwells on the politics of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at greater length than many recent volumes. This is one of the collection’s greatest strengths. Rather than the well-worn contrast between China’s declining master class of SOE employees and rising migrant proletariat, readers are introduced to more complex dynamics within the still-powerful state sector: the early political roots of the sector’s low productivity (a piece by Jia Wenjuan on the Great Leap Forward); the clash between the state’s need for democratic legitimacy and managers’ push for greater efficiency, as seen in the evolving staff and workers’ congress system (a piece by Cai He and Li Wanlian); the birth of a new state managerial elite exercising fresh—if still crude—forms of control (Tong Xin’s chapter); the outsourcing of jobs as state firms become integrated into global production chains (another chapter by Jia Wenjuan); and the ways in which apprenticeships and company housing once bridged inter-ethnic divides—and how the loss of these institutions has deepened ethnic stratification (Liu Ming). Throughout, the authors highlight how a sense of mutual obligation has been lost and how alienation has risen on the shop floor, although they place the inflection point at different time periods in different contexts.
The book indirectly captures the enduring challenge for Chinese academics of writing about contentious areas of their society (the translated writings mostly date from the late Hu Jintao-Jiabao administration and early Xi Jinping administration, before the government’s crackdown on higher education intensified). Although the book’s authors tackle quite sensitive issues, they generally only acknowledge the high-level politics involved in an oblique manner. This can leave a reader dissatisfied at points, when the broader context hangs unspoken over everything, as in Liu Ming’s observations about distanced neighbours in Xinjiang. It is unclear to this reviewer whether the chapters were chosen for their methodological similarity—but to the extent that their shared use of case studies reflects a general wariness of making more sweeping claims, then this also shows how political concerns can be limiting. At the same time, it can be refreshing to jump right into a discussion of workplace relations without the usual throat-clearing about authoritarianism that is de rigueur for writing on China by political scientists and sociologists based abroad.
The volume simultaneously shows the vibrant scholarship that can be produced precisely because the government is concerned about a political issue. As strikes by Chinese workers have risen over the past two decades, the country’s industrial relations researchers have received a level of support and prominence similar to that of their counterparts in the United States and Europe more than half a century ago, before the decline of Western trade unions. China-based scholars like those in this book have not only fanned out into factories to interview workers, but have also publicly debated legislation like the 2008 Labour Contract Law, engaged the country’s growing corps of labour non-governmental organizations and labour lawyers, and in at least one famous instance, helped negotiate an end to a factory dispute. Wen Xiaoyi, who wrote this volume’s chapter on trade union elections in Guangdong, has long been a participant-observer of union reform efforts in that province. The government’s fear of losing control has made it eager to find out what exactly is happening and learn from others’ experiences. This openness is sadly starting to reverse. But if the intensity of industrial conflict were lower, paradoxically not much space for labour scholarship might exist at all.
Established scholars and doctoral students alike will benefit from reading this book. It is fluidly translated and it fills important gaps in existing research. It applies concepts developed by theorists in China and abroad to developments in the “workshop of the world”—and then quietly tweaks those same theories. It alters our understanding of the country’s labour history in significant ways, e.g., by raising the status of the Great Leap Forward and its immediate aftermath and lowering that of the Cultural Revolution and early Reform Era. But most importantly, it introduces a thoughtful, creative, and committed group of scholars who should be followed closely by anyone concerned with social justice and worker power in China or elsewhere.
Manfred Elfstrom
University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna