Across the past three decades of state-led market reforms, Chinese workers have taken to the streets repeatedly. Their actions have led some observers to view China as not only the “factory of the world” but also its strike capital. Yet, the fruits of this extraordinary mobilization are very much open to debate. Should we be impressed with what Chinese workers have accomplished thus far or wonder why they have not done more? Should we study the methods of organizing they have developed or the obstacles that have impeded their further organization?
In her new book, The (Re)Making of the Chinese Working Class: Labor Activism and Passivity in China, Elly Leung draws on the theories of Michel Foucault to argue that Chinese workers’ acceptance of the “truth” of their inferior status prevents them from forming a fully fledged labour movement capable of fundamentally improving their lives. Her argument is buttressed by a review of Chinese labour history from the early 20th century up to present and interviews conducted between 2011 and 2014 with 74 workers in six cities in China, including both those workers who have joined in collective actions and those who have not.
Leung proceeds methodically. Following an introductory chapter, she utilizes Foucault's genealogical method to trace the roots of contemporary Chinese workers’ understanding of themselves back to hierarchical Confucian norms in imperial China, the political campaigns of the Mao era, and reform-era discourses around stability, law and civilized behaviour. The third chapter then focuses on workers who do not join protests, positing that they are held back by their culturally induced self-marginalization. In the fourth chapter, Leung turns her attention to those who do protest, finding that even these people – the hard cases for her theory – are constrained by “status consciousness” and only take action when they face subsistence crises.
The book is to be commended for moving on from the somewhat worn Marxist and social-movement theories frequently used to analyse Chinese industrial relations and instead adopting a fresh perspective. Like Eli Friedman's recent book on urbanization and migrant schooling in China, this volume demonstrates the insights that Foucault's thinking, especially, can bring to its topic. I also appreciate Leung's interest in studying non-protesters, not just righteous organizers.
Leung's fieldwork furthermore yields interesting data. Again and again, the workers she interviews evince a keen sense of being uncultured and of “low quality” and therefore deserving of – in fact, fated to – their low place in society. Those who have protested persistently meanwhile speak of their suppressed feelings (yayi) of “frustration, resentment, anger, and sorrow” at not being able to protect their minimal “right to subsistence” (shengcun quan), as opposed to striving for more ambitious goals (p. 134). Sadly, the interview-based chapters, unlike the theoretical and historical sections, take up less than a third of the book. I was left wishing that more of the volume was devoted to this compelling material!
Despite these strengths, I have reservations about the book's overall framing. The (Re)Making of the Chinese Working Class sets out to challenge what it describes as a common tendency among China scholars to interpret rising labour unrest as a sign of increased class consciousness. Yet, while some researchers have indeed asserted that the Chinese working class, or at least some portion of it, is in the process of evolving from a “class in itself” to a “class for itself,” Leung's own literature review provides ample evidence of the wide difference of opinion that exists on this matter among academics. In other words, the volume feels like it is challenging a straw man. To my mind, the book also sets an overly high bar for what counts as worker militancy: large-scale insurrection aimed at overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party. In the volume's conclusion, Leung compares labour mobilization in mainland China to the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill activism in Hong Kong, writing, “The Hong Kongers’ quest for freedom … is something that the Chinese … could not do” (p. 179). Adopting such a lofty standard automatically downgrades and flattens out the wide variety of actions that Chinese workers have taken that empower themselves and bring real change to their lives – injury compensation, higher wages, etc.
I also have some more fundamental concerns about Leung's argument. The book posits an unbroken pattern of state control over Chinese workers’ minds, from imperial China through the Mao era to today. As noted, Leung focuses in particular on the system of social responsibilities imposed by Confucianism. However, South Korea shares mainland China's Confucian heritage, but, as the book notes, nonetheless experienced a mass movement of students and workers in the 1980s that brought about a transition to democracy. The culture of Hong Kong, of course, overlaps with that of the mainland to an even greater extent, the city's British colonial interregnum notwithstanding, yet Hong Kong serves as Leung's principal contrasting case of revolutionary action. Nor is it accurate, I think, to argue that “Maoist thought control programs … created a working class of hundreds of millions of docile bodies and minds” (p. 73). As Joel Andreas's recent book and previous research by Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun demonstrate, the Cultural Revolution, in particular, involved Chinese workers in a complicated manner. Factory seizures in places like Shanghai during that period can obviously be evaluated in different ways, but they hardly seem “docile.” Today's Chinese legal apparatus, too, would seem to at once both channel and incite worker activism. Indeed, Leung suggests this has been the case with the legally oriented Guangdong NGOs that helped arrange some of the book's worker interviews.
These critiques aside, the book provides a useful addition to ongoing discussions. As China's strict zero-COVID-19 policies and (at the time of this writing) abrupt and chaotic abandonment of those policies place conflicting pressures on labour, it will be interesting to study the extent to which workers’ actions conform to Leung's analysis.
