Answer 2 of out the 12 questions given. (MODULE is Introduction to Political Economy of Development). See attached References - reference authors' names & book in the essay sentence. Don′t needs a bibliography or page number Don′t uses the same case studi
Michelle_Michy
LabourRelationsandDevelopment_ChinaCaseStudy.pptxIPED
18 March 2021
(online)
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Transition, Agency and Reform in China’s Labour Relations in the context of Rapid Development
1
China catch up in historical context
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
US – 140 years China – 30 years
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Imperialist legacies: Democratic Deficit or Authoritarian Advantage?
Nominal and PPP GDP
https://econreview.berkeley.edu/india-and-china-two-very-different-paths-to-development/
5
PPP and G20
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
İbrahim Öztürk (2020) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345393858_The_Case_of_Middle-Income_Trap_in_China_and_its_Institutional_Links_to_the_Belt_and_Road_Initiative/figures?lo=1
6
Competing Models and Records
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Life expectancy China 73.5 vs India 64.4
Infant mortality 17/1,000 vs India 50
Maternal mortality 38/100,000 live births China vs 230/100,000 India
Adult literacy 94 per cent China vs 74 India
Useful online HDI tool from http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/latest-human-development-index-ranking
Check out
7
Chinese FDI
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Chinese capital going out – A new colonialism?
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Research from Angola and Ethiopia – Carlos Oya and Schaefer (2019) https://www.soas.ac.uk/idcea/publications/reports/file141857.pdf
A labour and employment lens
national, sector and economic context are more important in understanding labour conditions in Africa than the country origin of the firm itself
Taking multiple factors into account the origin of a firm does not impact on wages on
average
Reported wages are not ‘poverty wages’ in the strict sense
evidence that in Ethiopia sampled Chinese firms contribute to training and skill development at least as much as other firms in the same sector, but it is in the manufacturing sector where training is widespread and considered as much more necessary by firms.
See also Mlambo , Kushamba and Siamwu (2016) China Africa Relations: What lies Beneath? The Chinese Economy
Sustainable Growth?
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
The Great Transition through a labour relations lens
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
1976 Mao dies. 1978 reform begins.
1989 Tiananmen Square; collapse of communism in Soviet Union and beyond; expectations that it could not last in China
But… ‘feeling for stones to cross the river’(gradual reform, sequential problem solving) and
‘seek the truth from the facts’ (pragmatism and gradualism)
Murky property rights
Transition From
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Command Economy
State-led, redistributive, repressive, politicised (Chan 2009, Pun Ngai 2005)
Re-unification of labour with the means of production (Feng Chen 2003; Andreas 2008)
The ‘plan’ provided the material basis for the integration of interests at danwei level (Clarke 2003)
12
Transition To
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Market Economy
A neo-liberal poster child (Kwong 2006 and see Wade)
Neo-liberal with ‘Chinese characteristics’ (Harvey 2007)
TVEs as ‘entrepreneurial local governments’ (Wu 2010)
A mixed economy characterised by state-led employment initiatives (Stiglitz 2002)
A non capitalist market economy (Arrighi 2007)
Separation of labour power from means of production: capitalist production relations (Andreas 2008)
Most agree that capitalist labour relations become widespread in China following WTO membership
Arrighi focus is on inequality between nations not on social and production relations within countries; Communist inspired welfare-orientated state relying on the dynamism of the market
Clarke and me: 15th Party Congress; 30-50 million lay-offs; ‘xiagang’ to ease the separation
Andreas: state has retained the capacity to steer large SOEs in line with ‘political concerns’ but nevertheless this was the largest and possibly the quickest ‘accumulation by disposession in history’.
Arrighi stresses the socialist legacy of education, health and land tenure.
Galbraith challenges the neo-liberal poster child image on the grounds that China has retained a SOEs in key sectors; does not have a fully convertible currency
13
Opening the Window to Capitalism
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Agricultural Reforms
Price reforms
Township and Village Enterprises
Large-scale economic migration
Hukou
Special Economic Zones
‘Feminisation’ of labour
Foreign Direct Investment
Deepening structural inequalities and corruption
The emergence of capitalist labour markets
Agricultural reform
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Household responsibility system
Growth of rural markets (Bramall 2009)
Land-use rights
Surplus production
Non-grain and rise of animal husbandry
Township and Village Enterprises
Employed up to 123 million off farm workers in 1990s
Hukou
Chinese apartheid to maintain regime?
Regulating the labour supply to ensure markets functioned
Special Economic Zones
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Windows of Capitalism
4 zones
14 cities
Away from traditional industrial centres
Technology transfers, foreign currency
Reform incubators
Heralded unprecedented rural-urban migration
Regulated Deregulation
Rural Employment
Major labour market reforms in the early reform era
1978 – HRS: allowing farmers more autonomy
1986 – Regulations to allowing SOE directors to issue contracts to new hires
1992 – experimental SEZs reconfirmed by Deng the ‘Southern Tour’
1994 – First national Labour Law
1997 – 15th Party Congress: 抓大放小
Closure of inefficient SOEs
College graduates no longer assigned employment (Yang 2017)
Hukou reforms
Facilitate rural-urban migration
Ask students from China about how their parents found employment
18
Urban reform: Smashing the Iron Rice Bowl (restructuring SOEs)
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Command Economy Unions
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Directive not representative
Integration of interests
Staff welfare, bonuses
Individual grievances; disciplinary matters
Mobilisation for production to meet the plan targets
Workers Autonomous Federations
Accidental – piggy-backed on the 1989 student movement
Dissatisfaction with ACFTU
Very popular at street level
Replicated in other major industrial cities
Weak at workplace level
ACFTU reaction
Hit very hard in the crackdown
Impetus for expanding civil society under Party wing(s)
Southern Tour
Piggy back: bus anecdote
Dissatisfaction: inflation; corruption; privilege;
Popularity: huge demonstrations
ACFTU reaction: support the students; denounced the WAFs
21
SOE restructuring: agency, resistance and trade unions
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
1997: 15th Party Congress: 抓大放小 (let go of the big hold on to the small)
Closure, mergers, ‘shareholderization’, privatisation
下岗：phased redundancies of approximately 50 million people between 1992-2004
Widespread scattered resistance from the ‘masters of the enterprise’
Sometimes framed in Maoist era rhetoric
Political constraints on leadership and cross enterprise resistance
Daqing: ‘they are destroying a “labour movement”’
Paying the Price https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/chinalbr02/ (Pringle (Chen, J.), Human Rights Watch 2002)
Rise of the informal economy and the ‘missing’ workers – ‘others’
Rapid and unprecedented rise in informal employment in China (Park and Cai 2011)
Using multiple sources
2005: 10% of workers were registered as self-employed
2005: 36% of workers were undocumented
2012: 29% of workers are ‘others’ in official labour statistics
‘Missing’ workers
Swallowed up in rapidly growing private sector
Undocumented migrant workers
Former SOE workers now laid off
Underestimation of the size of the tertiary sector adjusted in 2005.
Rise of the private sector
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
New ‘spaces of accumulation’ opened up driven by FDI and private capital
Administrative measures to release the reserve army
Division of specialisations based on historical- geographic and socio-cultural factors
Privatisation of TVEs
Wage and working conditions in an essentially non-unionised migrant workforce
China as the workshop of the world – stats…
Changes in Employment (1) rural-urban migration
Urban Employment
1997 was a key decision year – the end of the stalemate
Share of urban employment in SOEs dropped from 65% in 1995 to 24% in 2012.
Private firms share just shy of 50% in 2012
Foreign firms 10%
‘others’ – 29%
Urban employment structure
Employment relations in a market economy
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Individualising collective labour relations?
Massive migration off the land into non agricultural work
China’s first national Labour Law
Repeal of Trade Union Law
Predatory capital
Supply chains, informal work relations,
Deng’s version of ‘trickledown’
让一部分先富起来。。。
No right to organise outside of ACFTU
Right to strike deleted from Constitution in 1982
Legal framework for employment relations in a market economy
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Key Laws
Labour Law (1995)
Trade Union Law (1994)
Safety in Production Law (2002)
Labour Contract Law (2008
Labour Dispute and Arbitration Law (2008)
Employment Law (2008)
Social Security Law (2010)
Charity Law (2016) and Foreign NGO Law (2017)
Rise in Labour Disputes
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
https://clb.org.hk/content/labour-disputes-historic-highs-official-statistics-reveal
https://maps.clb.org.hk/strikes/en
Why are strikes and labour disputes significant in China’s political economy?
Challenge institutional status quo
General social instability
Threaten reform?
Threaten one-party rule?
Labour agency (class struggle) drives developmental change e.g…
Minimum Wage Increase
These have become a major guide for wage setting in unskilled and semi-skilled industries
Using the urban consumers’ price index minimum wages achieved significant growth since 2005 particularly between 2009 and 2017
Minimum wages in general grew as rapidly as the real GDP per capita.
The regional minimum wages on average increased by 1.68 times between 2005 and 2017,
Real GDP per capital of the whole economy increased by 1.67 times over the same period.
See Hao Qi and Pringle, Fig 1 (forthcoming)
Wages
Rural and Urban wages
Yang 2017 – labour accounts for 90% of HH income: labour earning are calculated by multiplying per capita income by total population and then dividing the result by total empoloyment for urban and rural areas separately
33
Workers Agency: HONDA: 2010
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Dispute sparked by interns’ condition
Resolved by ‘unprecedented’ negotiations between management and elected workers reps.
Post Honda: Direct elections of workplace union officials: significant change in policy
Post Honda collective bargaining
Describe the strike
34
Civil Society Agency: Rise of Labour NGOs
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Space for civil society has expanded under ‘functional authoritarianism’
Filling in the spaces left by the ACFTU?
Range of roles
Labour rights education
Representation and legal activism
Arbitration; courts
Campaigning
Occupational safety and health: Gold Peak; Gems sector
Community/labour centres
The anti-solidarity machine? (Lee and Shen 2011)
State response: cooperation and repression
Institutional Agency: ACFTU pilots
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Collective agreement in Wenling
Trade union rights centre in Yiwu
Wal-Mart
Direct elections of workplace union officials
Collective bargaining in some sectors (Chen WG 2013)
Xi Jinping – a new shade of authoritarianism?
Xi Jinping and anticorruption drive
Support from workers?
Authoritarianism
End of pragmatic authoritarianism?
Attack/clampdown on civil society
Meanwhile: Significant strikes
Sanitation workers (2013) (Pringle 2017) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2016.1205811
YICT Port workers (2014) http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24689/
Yue Yuen (YY) 2014 shoe factory workers
Social insurance and wages
Li De 2014-15
Social insurance and closure compensation
Coca Cola, Sony, Danone 2016
Compensation for sell offs
Volkswagon strikes
End of pragmatic authoritarianism?
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
Xi Jinping’s closing of space for autonomy:
Round up of human rights defenders
Detention of feminist five
Closure of non-state churches
Police sweep of labour activists and LNGOs in December 2015
Closing of sources of innovation?
Maoist students?
Strikes and labour unrest continue
Xi has ordered the unions to reform – twice
What next in China’s rise?
Tim Pringle Development Studies SOAS
China’s status at leader of Global South
China goes out – capital flows changing internally and externally
Exporting China development model?
Challenge to existing developmental aid models
Global rise of authoritarian populism
Internal growth contradictions continue
Environment
Stability
Employment
Political hinterlands
WATCH THIS SPACE!
