Class Struggle in China: Case Studies of Migrant Worker Strikes in the Pearl River Delta

Abstract

ABSTRACT China's ‘unlimited’ supply of low-cost and unorganised peasant workers (Lewis 1954) has helped it to become a global manufacturing centre. The potential of Chinese workers to change their working conditions has significant meaning for global labour politics. This article draws on ethnographic case studies to examine the extent of the rise of working-class power in South China in recent years. The author contests the dominant current in labour studies, which declares the ‘death of the working class’ and privileges non-class identities, and argues that the expansion of global production into China has intensified the class struggle in the workplace and beyond, although the progress of workers' class formation has been hindered by the ambiguity surrounding the state's policy on class organisations. Without effective class organisations the emergence of a labour movement remains unlikely, but the unstable workplace relations and labour market also present a challenge to both state and management, and should lead to steady improvements in general working conditions.