The cultural encounters in a Chinese sweatshop: Transnational movement of South Korean enterprises and the creation of borderland factory regime

This dissertation focuses on the creation of a factory regime in a South Korean transnational corporation (TNC) located in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, and especially on the power dynamics between foreign management, Chinese migrant workers, local-level Chinese government officials, and Chinese local gangs. In my research, I define the shop floor of the TNC as a "borderland," not only because the multiple presences of different 'cultures' exist in its space but also because its characteristics are not wholly compatible with the classic definitions of national territory. To attract TNCs, governments politically relinquish their legal rights (such as taxation) over these regions. TNCs also give up portions of their rights as proxies of global capitalism by complying with local government guidelines, to the extent that they require the ability of the government to provide infrastructure and cheap labor. My study demonstrates how a particular TNC becomes a locus for the government's desire to develop the "national economy," meeting the demands of global capitalism for economic profits, while sacrificing the interests of migrant workers. Through this approach, I show how relocating global capitalism brings about particular local consequences, complicated by the non-western origin of the TNC (South Korea) and the deepening social malaise of China as a neoliberal, post-socialist country. I pay particular attention to common features of post-socialist countries, namely, the growing infiltration of criminal networks into government organizations and the crisis of state governance as the result of the infiltration. By analyzing the emerging collaboration between foreign management, local-level officials, and local gangs, which works against the interest of Chinese migrant workers, this study contributes not only to the research on the politics of resistance of underprivileged people but also to the research on the power dynamics between the global and the local, articulated in the complex relations between transnational corporations, local officials, and migrant women workers. This dissertation is based on twelve months of archival research and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Beijing and Qingdao from June 2002 through May 2003.