Inside China's Automobile Factories

Abstract

This book is about labor relations in contemporary China's automobile industry. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in seven automobile assembly plants in China, Zhang explores a wide array of topics ranging from day-to-day workplace interaction to labor legislation at the national level. This book is packed with valuable information and insightful discussion. Rather than attempting to summarize, I identify and comment on three contributions of this book that are the most salient. First, in this book Zhang brings us a detailed ethnographic account of the conditions and experiences of Chinese autoworkers in the wake of the twenty-first century. Starting with a comprehensive description of the economic and policy contexts for the automobile industry (chapter 2), Zhang quickly zooms in on the firms and highlights how intense competition and China's unique institutional arrangements combined to shape workforce composition, the organization of production, and the labor management system in automobile factories (chapters 3 and 4). Zhang then examines in detail the experiences of formal workers and temporary workers under a tiered labor regime (chapters 5 and 6), focusing on how such a regime, which Zhang calls “labor force dualism,” creates distinct grievances and shapes compliance and resistance for the two groups of workers. This comparative ethnography is a valuable contribution to the literature in that it not only illustrates the complexity and dynamic nature of labor politics in China but also sheds new light on many long-held beliefs, such as those regarding autoworkers as a privileged group and the possibility of effecting broad changes with localized and short-lived labor resistance.