China's workers have been transformed by the transition to capitalism. Sally Sargeson presents a new theoretical analysis of the impact of capitalism and state power on social identities, employment conditions and workplace organization. Her study draws upon an unprecedented level of empirical research from case studies of the labour market and employment conditions in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. The book will interest students of Chinese political economy, socialist transition, working class formation and the representation of collective identity.

After a quarter of a century of market reform, China has become the workshop of the world and the leading growth engine of the global economy. Its immense labour force accounts for some twenty-nine per cent of the world's total labour pool but all too little is known about Chinese labour beyond the image of workers toiling under appalling sweatshop conditions for extremely low wages. Working in China introduces the lived experiences of labour in a wide range of occupations and work settings. The chapters of this book cover professional employees such as engineers and lawyers, service workers such as bar hostesses, domestic maids and hotel workers, and industrial workers in a variety of factories. The mosaic of human faces, organizational dynamics and workers' voices presented in the book reflect the complexity of changes and challenges taking place in the Chinese workplace today. Based on extraordinary and thorough field research, this book will have a wide readership at undergraduate level and beyond, appealing to students and scholars from a myriad of disciplines including Chinese studies, labour studies, sociology and political economy.

This book focuses on the lives, struggles, and contrasting perspectives of the 60,000 workers, military administrators, and technical staff employed in the largest, most strategic industry of the Nationalist government, the armaments industry based in the wartime capital, Chongqing. The author argues that China's arsenal workers participated in three interlocked conflicts between 1937 and 1953: a war of national liberation, a civil war, and a class war. The work adds to the scholarship on the Chinese revolution, which has previously focused primarily on rural China, showing how workers’ alienation from the military officers directing the arsenals eroded the legitimacy of the Nationalist regime and how the Communists mobilized working-class support in Chongqing. Moreover, in emphasizing the urban, working-class, and nationalist components of the 1949 revolution, the author demonstrates the multiple sources of workers’ identities and thus challenges previous studies that have exclusively stressed workers’ particularistic or regional identities.

This book comprehensively investigates the position of China’s working class between the 1980s and 2010s and considers the consequences of economic reforms in historical perspective. It argues the case that, far from the illusion during the Maoist period that a new society had been established where the working classes held greater political and economic autonomy, economic reforms in the post-Mao era have led to the return of traditional Marxist proletariats in China. The book demonstrates how the reforms of Deng Xiaoping have led to increased economic efficiency at the expense of economic equality through an extensive case study of an SOE (state-owned enterprise) in Sichuan Province as well as wider discussions of the emergence of state capitalism on both a micro and macroeconomic level. The book also discusses workers’ protests during these periods of economic reform to reflect the reformation of class consciousness in post-Mao China, drawing on Marx’s concept of a transition from a ‘class-in-itself' to a ‘class-for-itself’. It will be valuable reading for students and scholars of Chinese economic and social history, as well as political economy, sociology, and politics.

China’s economic reforms have brought the country both major international clout and widespread domestic prosperity. At the same time, the reforms have led to significant social upheaval, particularly manifest in labour relations. Each year, several thousand disputes break out over working conditions, many of them violent, and the Chinese state has responded with both legal and political strategies. This book investigates how Chinese governments have used law, and other forms of regulation, to govern working conditions and combat labour disputes. Starting from the early years of the Republican period, the book traces the evolution of the law of work in modern China right up to the reforms of the present day. It considers the structure of Chinese work law, drawing on both Chinese and Western scholarship to provide new insights into its unique features and assess where the law is innovative and where it is stagnant and unresponsive. The authors explore the various legal and extra-legal techniques successive Chinese governments have adopted to enforce work law and the responses of firms, workers and organizations to these practices.

Rising labour unrest is changing Chinese governance from below; Elfstrom shows that this is occurring in unexpected and contradictory ways.