From “Master” to “Menial”: State-owned enterprise workers in contemporary China

This essay first looks at “enterprise democracy”, as defined by law, in China, and examines why it has never been genuinely implemented and how this relates to workers’ failure to resist the privatization of their enterprises at the turn of the century. It explores the crippling clauses in the laws, especially those relating to the ACFTU (All China Federation of Trade Unions), which also show the deep hostility of the ruling party towards any sign of autonomous movement from below. It links the party’s lack of incentive to respect the rule of law to the material interests of the ruling bureaucracy, and argues that this can be traced back to Mao’s period. It therefore does not agree with the notion, put forward by some, that the Chinese working class in the state sector was really the “master of the house” in that period. Precisely because of decades of atomization prior to the reform period, workers were left defenseless when the market reform attack started. Although they rose to protest in millions in 1989, the defeat of the movement paved the way for a second wave of attacks on workers, namely the privatization of state owned enterprises. The essay concludes with a debate on the lessons to be learned from the Chinese workers’ demise and the way forward for them.