A Class Analysis of Benefits Distribution in a Chinese High-Technology Development Zone

Abstract

Most studies of income determination in post-Mao China reduce nonwage forms of compensation (benefits) to their monetary equivalent and are only concerned with their contribution to total incomes. I suggest instead that the nature, function and combination of benefits are as important as their monetary value. Building upon Wright's neo-Marxist class analysis, I argue that benefits should be conceptualized as mechanisms of social control over labour. Since mechanisms of social control are not homogeneous across class locations, the processes governing the distribution of different forms of benefits can be expected to vary according to the class location of individuals. In this study, the neo-Marxist class model proposed by Wright in 'Class Counts' (1997) was used to allocate employees to a class location according to their degrees of authority and expertise. A series of probit models was then estimated to investigate how class location and individual-level attributes affected the distribution of different categories of benefits. The results of the study were largely consistent with Wright's predictions. In particular, benefits related to long-term career prospects and to temporal class trajectories were strongly associated with middle class locations -- locations defined, in Wright's terminology, as 'contradictory locations within capitalist class relations.' The paper includes an Appendix on the operationalization of class variables.