Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt (review)

This is a fascinating and well-written book based on extensive fieldwork and personal interviews. It studies labor protests in two different provinces of China, Liaoning and Guangdong, and presents a solid piece of research on labor protests in two very different places. Liaoning, the old industrial base in northern China, is portrayed in this book as a rustbelt region that has taken on the challenging task of eradicating the remains of a planned economy. Guangdong, the thriving southern province of China, is portrayed as a sunbelt region that has experienced a booming market economy. The author reveals that labor protests in these two regions have very different styles. Workers of state-run enterprises in the north have been hit hard by mergers, bankruptcies, and closings of factories where they have worked their whole lives. They are fighting for the fringe benefits that their livelihood depends so much on. The migrant labors in the south, however, suffer from different kinds of exploitation: low or unpaid wages, poor working conditions, and inhumane treatment. The author classifies labor protests in the north as the "protests of desperation," or "Polanyi-type," and the labor protests in the south as "protests against discrimination," or "Marx-type" (pp. x, 10). The "protests of desperation," according to the author, are aimed at protecting social contract the state intends to abandon, while the "protests against discrimination" are the small-scale collective actions taken by migrant labors employed mostly by private enterprises to fight against the exploitation by the capitalists in the production process (p. 10).

The book contains seven chapters. Chapter 1 intends to establish an analytical framework within which the labor protests are to be analyzed. The author argues that the rising tide of labor unrest in China is a result of the "commodification of labors" (p. 10), a process that is, in turn, a creation of the "decentralized accumulation and legal authoritarianism" (p. 11). The assumption is somewhat ambiguous and needs further clarification. Another notable weakness with this analytical framework is the lack of objective assessment of the overall political environment within which the labor movement operates. A critical political variable is missing in the analysis. The cellular activism, as the author calls it, may be better explained by the lack of independent trade unions and the underdevelopment of a civil society. The efficiency-driven economic reform may be responsible for labor unrest in both rustbelt and sunbelt regions. Furthermore, the notion of "decentralized accumulation" is also a poorly constructed concept since efficiency-first is a national priority, not just a local practice, and has been pursued aggressively in Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin eras at both national and local levels.

Chapter 2 examines the uneven transition from socialist social contract to market-based labor contract. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the protests of desperation. Again, the author failed to take the overall state policy into consideration. It is true the labor unrest of the rustbelt region is a sign of a policy failure at the local level. But this is only a partial picture. The transformation of nonperforming state enterprises has been considered a big success in China's economic reform by many scholars. We can make a simple macro-level analysis to see the impact the radical transformation has had on the overall political social stability. In 1993, there were 103 million workers and staff employed by the state-run enterprises nationwide. However, by 2005, state-owned enterprises employed only 64 million workers and staff, which includes new hires.¹ Most of the 103 million were laid off or put on various retirement schemes gradually. Less than a half of the laid-off workers found new jobs.² If one takes these massive numbers into account, one should be amazed by how smooth the transition from the social contract system to the labor contract system has been, and by how much smaller...