Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:25:35.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Labour Law System, Capitalist Hegemony and Class Politics in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2016

Elaine Sio-ieng Hui
Elaine Sio-ieng Hui*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University. Email: suh275@psu.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates how the Chinese labour law system has helped to reproduce capitalist hegemony, i.e. the ethico-political, moral and cultural leadership of the ruling class. Based on intensive fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta and 115 interviews with migrant workers, this article shows that the labour law system has exercised a double hegemonic effect with regards to capital–labour relations and state–labour relations. Through normalizing, countervailing, concealing and transmuting mechanisms, the labour law system has been able to buffer both the market economy and the party-state from workers’ radical and fundamental criticism. However, the double hegemony mediated through the labour law system has influenced the Chinese migrant workers in an uneven manner: some of them have granted active consent to the ruling class leadership; some have only rendered passive consent; and some have refused to give any consent at all.

摘要

本文探讨中国的劳动法体制如何再生产资本主义的文化霸权--即统治阶级的政治, 道德和文化领导。透过在珠三角地区进行的深入田野调查和 115 个工人访谈, 本文展示中国的劳动法体制对资本—劳工关系和国家—劳工关系, 发挥了双重的文化霸权影响性。透过四种机制—常态机制, 抵消机制, 隱蔽机制和变换机制, 劳动法体制令到工人没有对市场经济和党政作出最根本和激进的批评。可是, 透过劳动法体制再生产的双重文化霸权对工人的影响不一。有些工人对统治阶级的领导给予积极的认同; 有些则给予消极的认同; 有部份工人完全没给予认同。

Keywords

hegemonyChinalabour lawsclass consciousnessclass politicsmigrant workersthe state文化霸权劳动法阶级意识阶级政治农民工国家
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 226 , June 2016 , pp. 431 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamson, Walter L. 1980. Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci's Political and Cultural Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California. Google Scholar
Anderson, Perry. 1976. “The antinomies of Gramsci.” New Left Review 100, 18.Google Scholar
Archer, Margaret. 1982. “Morphogenesis versus structuration: on combining structure and action.” British Journal of Sociology 33(4), 455–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blecher, Marc. 2002. “Hegemony and workers’ politics in China.” The China Quarterly 170, 283–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blecher, Marc. 2004. “The working class and governance.” In Howell, Jude (ed.), Governance in China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 193–206.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael. 2012. “The roots of domination: beyond Bourdieu and Gramsci.” Sociology 46(2), 187–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Anita. 2001. Chinese Workers under Assault. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Chan, Chris King-chi. 2012. “Class or citizenship? Debating workplace conflict in China.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 42(2), 308–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, King-Chi Chris, and Hui, Sio-Ieng Elaine. 2012. “The dynamics and dilemma of workplace trade union reform in China: the case of the Honda workers’ strike.” Journal of Industrial Relations 54, 653–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Feng, and Tang, Mengxiao. 2013. “Labor conflicts in China: typologies and their implications.” Asian Survey 53(3), 559–583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooney, Sean. 2007. “China's labour law, compliance and flaws in implementing institutions.” Journal of Industrial Relations 49, 673–686.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooney, Sean, Biddulph, Sarah, Li, Kungang and Ying, Zhu. 2007. “China's new Labour Contract Law: responding to the growing complexity of labour relations in the PRC.” University of New South Wales Law Journal 30(3), 786–801.Google Scholar
Diamant, Neil, Lubman, Stanley B. and O'Brien, Kevin J. (eds.). 2005. Engaging the Law in China: State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Femia, Joseph V. 1987. Gramsci's Political Thought : Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Eli, and Lee, Ching Kwan. 2010. “Remaking the world of Chinese labour: a 30-year retrospective.” British Journal of Industrial Relations 48(3), 507–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Mary E. 2005. “Use the law as your weapon! Institutional change and legal mobilization in China.” In Diamant, Neil, Lubman, Stanley B. and O'Brien, Kevin J. (eds.), Engaging the Law in China: State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 54–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Mary E. 2007. “‘Hope for protection and hopeless choices’: labour legal aid in the PRC.” In Perry, Elizabeth J. and Goldman, Merle (eds.), Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China. London: Harvard University Press, 196–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Mary, Giles, John, Park, Albert and Wang, Meiyan. 2015. “China's 2008 Labour Contract Law: implementation and implications for China's workers.” Human Relations 68(2), 197–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. (Hoare, Q. and Smith, G.N. (trans.) (eds.)). New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Gramsci, Antonio. 1988. A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writing 1916–1935. (Forgacs, D. (ed.)). New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Gries, Peter Hays. 2004. “Popular nationalism and state legitimation in China.” In Gries, Peter Hays and Rosen, Stanley (eds.), State and Society in 21st-century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 180–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1979. “Legitimation problems in the modern state. In Habermas, Jürgen (ed.), Communication and the Evolution of Society. London: Heinemann Education Books.Google Scholar
Hui, Sio-Ieng Elaine, and Chan, King-Chi Chris. 2012. “The ‘harmonious society’ as a hegemonic project: labour conflicts and changing labour policies in China.” Labour, Capital and Society 44(2), 153–183.Google Scholar
Jessop, Bob. 1982. The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods. Oxford: Martin Robertson.Google Scholar
Jessop, Bob. 2008. State Power: A Strategic-relational Approach. London: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 1995. “Engendering the worlds of labor: women workers, labor markets, and production politics in the south China economic miracle.” American Sociological Review 60(3), 378–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 2007. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir I. 2012 [1969, cited 7th February 2012]. The State and Revolution, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm. Accessed 18 March 2016.Google Scholar
Leung, Pak Nang, and Pun, Ngai. 2009. “The radicalisation of the new Chinese working class: a case study of collective action in the gemstone industry.” Third World Quarterly 30(3), 551–565.Google Scholar
Liebman, Benjamin L. 2007. “China's court: restricted reform.” The China Quarterly 191, 620–638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. 1978. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In Tucker, Robert (ed.), The Marx–Engels Reader. New York: W.W. Norton, 469–500.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 1979. “Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci.” In Mouffe, Chantal (ed.), Gramsci Marxist Theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 168–204.Google Scholar
Ngok, Kinglun. 2008. “The changes of Chinese labor policy and labor legislation in the context of market transition.” International Labor and Working-class History 73, 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potter, Pitman B. 2004. “Legal reform in China: institutions, culture, and selective adaptation.” Law & Social Inquiry 29(2), 465–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1973. Political Power and Social Classes. London: New Left Review and Sheed and Ward.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. 2008. The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law and the State. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Pun, Ngai. 2005. Making in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pun, Ngai, and Lu, Huilin. 2010. “Unfinished proletarianization: self, anger, and class action among the second generation of peasant-workers in present-day China.” Modern China 36(5), 493–519.Google Scholar
Salamini, Leonardo. 1974. “Gramsci and Marxist sociology of knowledge: an analysis of hegemony-ideology-knowledge.” Sociological Quarterly 15(Summer), 359–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherrer, Christoph. 2001. “‘Double hegemony’? State and class in American foreign economic policymaking.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 46(4), 573–591.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1993. “China's transients and the state: a form of civil society?” Politics & Society 21, 91–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Rachel E., and O'Brien, Kevin J.. 2012. “Politics at the boundary: mixed signals and the Chinese state.” Modern China 38(2), 174–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, Ruth A., and Wolf, Alison. 2006. Contemporary Sociological Theory: Expanding the Classical Tradition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Wright, Teresa. 2004. “Contesting state legitimacy in the 1990s: the China Democracy Party and the China Labor Bulletin.” In Gries, Peter Hays and Rosen, Stanley (eds.), State and Society in 21st-century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 123–140.Google Scholar
Zheng, H.R. 1987. “An introduction to the Labor Law of the People's Republic of China.” Harvard International Law Journal 28(2), 385–432.Google Scholar
Zhu, Sanzhu. 2004. “Reforming state institutions: privatizing the lawyers’ system.” In Howell, Jude (ed.), Governance in China. Maryland, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 58–76.Google Scholar