3 - Bureaucratic Incentives

Summary

The previous chapter focused on the causes of different forms of worker resistance. Specifically, I reviewed the existing scholarship on Chinese labor unrest and provided fresh evidence, in the shape of a new dataset and government statistics, that resistance in China is not only rising but also increasingly boundary-spanning or transgressive in nature. Moreover, I showed that, owing to particular local combinations of sectors and worker demographics – recipes for resistance – this dynamic is more evident in some parts of the country than others. Now, I begin an extended exploration of the consequences of resistance for the state. It should not be controversial to argue that the quantitative and qualitative shift in contention underway places tremendous pressure on authorities, especially in those areas where the shift is most pronounced. To make such a claim begs the question, though, of how, exactly, that pressure is exerted. This chapter is devoted to this “how” question. Answering it requires a less monolithic understanding of “the state.” In particular, it demands an approach that acknowledges that, at the end of the day, decisions about ruling China’s contentious workplaces are not made by some abstract “regime” but instead by individual planners in the great gated government compounds of provincial capitals. Or by cadres from the official trade union pulled from their lunches to calm disputes.