State, Workers, and NGOs: Four Decades of Labor Reform in China

Abstract

My work is intended to give an overview of China’s labor landscape and its evolution along the last four decades. I am going to describe the various phases through which China’s labor realm has evolved. From Mao’s socialist planned economy and the “iron rice bowl”; to Deng Xiaoping’s push for the liberalization of economy and the adoption of an “open-door policy”; to the current problems related to labor, which has become flexible and commodified, and workers’ reaction to them. Due to these issues, episodes of public turmoil became more and more frequent, so the government took action to reform the legal system and created a dispute resolution process divided in mediation, arbitration and litigation. However, in the last twenty years authorities promoted “grand mediation” as the pivotal means to resolve disputes. When facing the legal system, workers can ask for the support of many actors, both official and unofficial. I will shortly describe the main legal aid providers, but my work focuses especially on official Trade Unions and unofficial NGOs. Trade Unions are China’s only formal actors which can defend worker rights. However, they are strongly tied to the Party-State, so their efficiency in protecting worker rights is quite low. NGOs, instead, are the actors which play the principal role in helping workers, especially when undertaking collective actions. Nonetheless, under Xi’s administration NGOs action has been fiercely hindered and now their future is uncertain.