Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:13:51.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Influence of Overseas Business Associations on Law-making in China: A Case Study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2016

Elaine Sio-ieng Hui*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University.
Chris King-chi Chan
Affiliation:
City University of Hong Kong. Email: kccchan@cityu.edu.hk.
*
Email: suh275@psu.edu (corresponding author).

Abstract

Through an investigation of the Shenzhen Collective Consultation Ordinance and the Guangdong Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises, this article demonstrates how transnational capital in China deploys its associational power alongside its structural economic power to lobby and pressure the national and local governments to advance its own interests. In addition, building upon the ideas of Hall and Soskice about the varieties of capitalism, the authors have developed the concept of “varieties of transnational capital” to account for the differing positions of overseas business associations regarding the two laws. We find that these positions are shaped by two determining factors: a) where the associations are situated in global production chains, and b) the industrial relations model in their home countries.

摘要

通过对《深圳市集体协商条例》和《广东省企业民主管理条例》的个案调查, 本本文展示了在中国的跨国资本如何通过结社性的力量和结构性的经济力量向国家和地方政府游说和施壓, 以推進其利益。此外, 本文作者以霍尔和索斯克斯 “资本主义多样性” 的理论为基础, 发展了 “跨国资本多样性” 的概念, 以此来解释不同的海外商会为何对中国两个立法采取不同的态度。本文认为, 他们不同的立场主要源于两个决定性的因素: 一是他们在全球生产链中的位置, 二是他们所在母国的产业关系模式。

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Tim Pringle, Christoph Scherrer, Chen Feng, Violaine Delteil and Khalid Nadiv for their comments on previous versions of this article and research assistance. They also thank FNV Mondiaal and the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong (Project No. CityU 140313) for their financial support to different stages of this research.

References

AmCham South China. 2011. “2011 ‘White paper’ on the business environment in China,” http://www.amcham-southchina.org/amcham/static/publications/whitepaper.jsp. Accessed 11 November 2014.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2006. State and Laid-off Workers in Reform China: The Silence and Collective Action of the Retrenched. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chan, Anita. 2001. Chinese Workers under Assault. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Chan, Anita. 2011. “Strikes in China's export industries in comparative perspective.” The China Journal 65, 2752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, King Chi Chris. 2010. The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in Global Factories. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chan, King Chi Chris, and Hui, Sio Ieng Elaine. 2012. “The dynamics and dilemma of workplace trade union reform in China: the case of the Honda workers’ strike.” Journal of Industrial Relations 54, 653668.Google Scholar
Chan, King Chi Chris, and Hui, Sio Ieng Elaine. 2014. “The development of collective bargaining in China: from ‘collective bargaining by riot’ to ‘Party state-led wage bargaining’.” The China Quarterly 217, 221242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Feng. 2003. “Between the state and labour: the conflict of Chinese trade unions’ double identity in market reform.” The China Quarterly 178, 1006–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Feng. 2009. “Individual rights and collective rights: labor's predicament in China.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40, 5979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Feng, and Tang, Meng Xiao. 2013. “Labor conflicts in China: typologies and their implications.” Asian Survey 53(3), 559583.Google Scholar
Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong. 2010. “Sida shanhui heban ‘Guangdong, Shenzhen qiye minzhu guanli ji jiti xieshan tiaoli zixunhui,’ tingqu ji shouji gongshan yeji yijian” (Biggest four chambers co-organized “Guangdong Democratic Enterprise Mangement Regulations and Shenzhen Collective Consultation Ordinance” consultation meeting to collect opinions from the industrial and commercial sectors), http://cma.org.hk/news-detail/1247/55. Accessed 14 September 2010.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert A. 1961. Who Governs? New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
FHKI (Federation of Hong Kong Industries). 2010a. “Guanyu ‘Shenzhen tequ jiti xieshan tiaoli’ (xiugai cao'an zhengqiu yijiangao) de kanfa he jianyi” (Opinions and comments on the “Shenzhen special economic zone collective consultation ordinance”), August, https://www.industryhk.org/upload/news/attachment/de420dc5314183d07e30be45643e32ac.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2013.Google Scholar
FHKI. 2010b. “Guanyu ‘Guangdongsheng gongzi jiti xieshan tiaoli’ ji ‘Guangdongsheng qiye minzhu guanli tiaoli (cao'an xiugaigao)’ de baogao” (Report on “Guangdong province collective wage consultation regulations” and “Guangdong province democratic enterprise management regulations”), August, https://www.industryhk.org/upload/news/attachment/13aec9cc5250cbe997d0a2fa221ac4e4.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2013.Google Scholar
Foster, Kenneth W. 2008. “Embedded within state agencies: business associations in Yantai.” In Unger, Jonathan (ed.), Associations and the Chinese State: Contested Spaces. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 86116.Google Scholar
Gill, Stephen, and Law, David. 1989. “Global hegemony and the structural power of capital.” International Studies Quarterly 33(4), 475499.Google Scholar
Globalization Monitor. 2010. Complicity, Campaigns, Collaboration, and Corruption: Strategies and Responses to European Corporations and Lobbyists in China. Hong Kong: Globalization Monitor.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter, and Soskice, David. 2001. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hui, Sio Ieng Elaine. 2011. “Understanding labour activism in the Chinese automotive industry.” In Scherrer, Christoph (ed.), China's Labor Question. Munich: Rainer Hampp Verlag, 133151.Google Scholar
Hyman, Richard. 2001. “The rise and decline of collective bargaining as a mechanism of employment regulation in Britain.” In Alaluf, Mateo and Prieto, Carlos Rodriguez (eds.), Collective Bargaining and the Social Construction of Employment. Brussels: European Trade Union Institute, 187204.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Scott. 2005. The Business of Lobbying in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Chang Hee. 2006. “Recent industrial relations developments in China and Viet Nam: the transformation of industrial relations in East Asian transition economies.” Journal of Industrial Relations 48(3), 415429.Google Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 1998. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 2007. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1979. The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (revised). New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1992. Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
McFarland, Andrew. 2010. “Interest group theory.” In Maisel, L. Sandy, Berry, Jeffrey M. and Edwards, George C. III (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of American Political Parties and Interest Groups. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3856.Google Scholar
Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Silver, Beverly J. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklair, Leslie. 1997. “Social movements for global capitalism: the transnational capitalist class in action.” Review of International Political Economy 4(3), 514538.Google Scholar
Traxler, Franz, Blaschke, Sabine and Kittel, Bernhard. 2001. National Labour Relations in Internationalized Markets: A Comparative Study of Institutions, Change, and Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Unger, Jonathan. 2008. “The strange marriage between the state and private business in Beijing.” In Unger, Jonathan (ed.), Associations and the Chinese State: Contested Spaces. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 117148.Google Scholar
van der Pijl, Kees. 1984. The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q. (ed.). 1980. The Politics of Regulation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin. 2000. “Working-class power, the capitalist-class interests, and class compromise.” American Journal of Sociology 104(4), 9571002.Google Scholar