From Detroit to Shanghai? Globalization, market reform, & dynamics of labor unrest in the Chinese automobile industry, 1980 to the present

The rapid rise of China to become the world's largest auto vehicle producer and market made newspaper headlines at the end of 2009. Despite the extensive interest in the booming Chinese auto industry, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the 1.7 million Chinese autoworkers who are "making" those headlines. These workers are the focus of this dissertation. Most existing research on the changing labor relations in post-reform China focuses either on labor-intensive manufacturing in the "sun-belt" south China or on declining state-owned enterprises in the "rustbelt" Northeast China. This in-depth case study of the automobile industry contributes an important contrasting case for comparison (i.e., a capital-intensive pillar industry experiencing fast expansion and restructuring with both heavy state and global capital involvement through joint ventures).;Based on intensive fieldwork in seven major automobile factories, I describe (1) the dramatic restructuring and recomposition of the autoworker labor force that has taken place since the mid-1990s; (2) the everyday experience of work on the shopfloor (the social life of the factory including the labor process, workplace hierarchy and relations with management, and the determination of wages); (3) the extent and type of grievances expressed by autoworkers; and (4) the extent and type of collective actions (resistance) that they engage in, and the sources of bargaining power on which they draw in these collective actions.;The main argument is that labor relations in the post-reform Chinese automobile industry are characterized by widespread labor force dualism. "Hegemonic relations" have been established between management and formal contract workers based on high wages, generous benefits, and relatively secure employment; while "despotic labor control" characterizes the conditions of temporary workers with lower wages, fewer benefits and little job security. Labor force dualism was implemented in an effort to solve the problem of providing employers with flexibility in hiring/firing while at the same time obtaining cooperation/loyalty from the core (formal) workers. But it has had notable unintended consequences. Based on my fieldwork, I argue that labor force dualism so far has detached formal workers from temporary workers and has kept the former relatively quiet so far, despite their serious and growing grievances. However, the dualistic system has radicalized a "new" generation of temporary agency workers who actively protest discriminatory treatment.;The dissertation moves from the shopfloor to the national and global levels. Shop-floor dynamics are very much conditioned by global processes . Hegemonic relations with formal workers are premised on certain privileges in wages and job security; however, intense competitive pressures at a late stage of "product cycle" of the world automobile production has driven management to cut costs and reduce these privileges. As a result, the consent of formal workers with management based on material gains is declining. Shop-floor and global processes are themselves conditioned by national political processes. The bottom-up pressure of rising labor unrest since the 1990s in myriad industries has forced the central government to modify its relationship with labor and capital through pro-labor legislation---notably, the Labor Contract Law, which promises more job security and protection for Chinese workers. This state-led pro-labor legislation has, in turn, had direct impacts on labor-management relations on the automobile factory shop floor.;The dissertation is based on sixteen months of fieldwork from 2004 to 2007 at seven major automobile factories in six Chinese cities (Changchun, Shanghai, Qingdao, Yantai, Guangzhou, Wuhu), where I conducted in-depth interviews with 150 autoworkers, 30 managers, 20 factory party and union leaders, and 38 local government officials, labor dispute arbitrators, and Chinese labor scholars.