Precarization or Empowerment? Reflections on Recent Labor Unrest in China

Labor scholars have highlighted the predicament of “precarization” besetting the working class everywhere in the twenty-first century. Beneath the “proletariat” now stands the “precariat,” for whom exploitation seems like a privilege compared to constant exclusion from the labor market. Amidst world...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Journal of Asian studies Vol. 75; no. 2; pp. 317 - 333
Main Author:	Lee, Ching Kwan
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.05.2016 Association for Asian Studies Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects:	Asian studies Authoritarianism Chinese languages Commodification Economic conditions Employees Employment Empowerment Exploitation Factories Factory labor Farmlands Income distribution Labor Labor law Labor market Labor strikes Migrant labor Migrant workers Optimism Personal empowerment Political activism Politics Proletariat Puns Radicalism Shortages Social classes Social networks Sociology Strikes Subsistence farming Trends Voluntarism Wages & salaries Workers Workforce Working class Beijing China New York United States > US China Europe
ISSN:	0021-9118, 1752-0401
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Labor scholars have highlighted the predicament of “precarization” besetting the working class everywhere in the twenty-first century. Beneath the “proletariat” now stands the “precariat,” for whom exploitation seems like a privilege compared to constant exclusion from the labor market. Amidst worldwide employment informalization and decimation of workers’ collective capacity, media reports and academic writings on Chinese workers in the past several years have singularly sustained a curious discourse of worker empowerment. Strikes in some foreign-invested factories have inspired claims of rising working-class power. Finding little empirical support for the empowerment thesis, this article spotlights the Chinese peculiarity of the global phenomenon of precarization and the dynamics of recent strikes, suggesting the need for Chinese labor studies to rebalance its prevailing voluntarism and optimism with more attention to institutional and political-economic conditions.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14
ISSN:	0021-9118 1752-0401
DOI:	10.1017/S0021911815002132