Chinese Employee Class: an analysis using a three-dichotomy segmentation approach

Abstract

As the ‘World's Factory’, China now has the biggest worker/employee class in the world. Though this newly emerging social group has captured much attention, relatively few scholars have paid attention to such sociological questions as raised by this paper: rather than referring to such a huge group of almost 500 million people simply as ‘Chinese workers’ or ‘Chinese employees’, can this social class be stratified and in what way? What is the current situation of the employee class in China's contemporary industrial relations? This paper attempts to concisely answer the above questions by proposing a three dichotomy segmentation approach and a review of the existing literature on the matter, providing a broader picture to the readers with regards to the current situations of different employee groups in the context of China's unprecedented transitional economy.