Labor Activism in China’s Auto Parts Sector: How Did It Succeed? Why Is It Declining?

• In Event: 30826 - Unions and Labor Unrest

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, China has witnessed a significant rise in labor unrest, most of which have taken the form of spontaneous strikes and protests. The total number peaked at 2,775 in 2015. However, this trend has been declining since then, falling to 1,385 in 2019 and further to 908 in 2023 (CLB Strike Map).

Conventionally, scholars attribute the success of labor activism in China to the rising working-class or rights consciousness of a new generation of migrant workers and their increasing ability to mobilize social resources. Similarly, they contribute the decline in labor activism to the country’s repressive labor politics. However, a decade after the strike wave, the workers remain largely the same cohort of individuals. And the government crackdowns primarily target a small group of labor activists, while most of previous successful collective action are not organized by any formal organizations. This raises a critical question: why workers can successfully take on strike a decade ago but failed to do so now?

This study is build on the author’s decade-long ethnographic study of labor unrests and collective bargaining practices in Southern China’s auto parts sector. Drawing on Piven’s (1978, 1991) theory of collective action, this paper argues that the initial success of auto parts workers was due to a confluence of factors: rising worker aspirations, loosing vertical social integration, and the strong structural bargaining power of auto parts workers. In contrast, their later failures resulted from various factors that strengthened the vertical social control, delegitimized workers’ collective action and eroded their ability to disrupt production. This study highlights that class consciousness and mobilizing resources are not pre-condition for collective action, but rather outcome of it.

Author

• Guowei Liang, Johns Hopkins University