From Corporatism to Corporatization: Industrial Restructuring and the Decline of China’s Workers Congress System

• In Event: 2357 - Sociology of Work and the Workplace

Abstract

In recent years, Chinese authorities have reported an extraordinary expansion of the staff and workers congress system and have reiterated its importance as a channel for employee participation in factory management. We examine the operation of SWCs in Chinese factories, concluding that although they played an important—if limited—role in the past, they have sharply declined over the past two decades with the transformation of China’s factories into profit-oriented enterprises, a process known as “corporatization.” We join a broader discussion about the evolution of corporatist industrial relations—and their prospects—in China and around the globe. The Chinese version of corporatism, of which employee congresses were a prominent feature, was characterized by high levels of participation, but little room for autonomous activity. Workers’ participation, we argue, was based on a system permanent employment, and the decline of SWCs reflects the erosion of this system, as corporatization has made employment more precarious.
In our investigation we have consulted documentary sources, including laws and regulations as well as factory gazetteers, yearbooks, and reports. Our most important sources, however, have been interviews with 120 workers and managers who have worked in dozens of factories in eighteen different cities and towns at some point over the past seventy years. Through these interviews we have endeavored to understand how labor relations have changed over time and how SWCs have actually functioned. In our analysis of the critical moments of corporatization and industrial restructuring, we focus on these processes in a single enterprise, a large glass factory.

Authors

• Joel D. Andreas, Johns Hopkins University

• Yao Li, Harvard University

• Peiyao Li, Jilin University