Bringing Ideology Back In

In talking about ideology, it seems reasonable to start from Weber's metaphor that ideas function as “switchmen” that determine “the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.”Footnote ¹ Raymond Williams defines ideology as “an articulated system of meanings, values, and beliefs of a kind that can be abstracted as [a] ‘worldview.’”Footnote ² This kind of “worldview,” in Bendix's account, is particularly important for those who seek to explain and justify authority.Footnote ³ My view is that attention to the explanatory power of ideology, and not just a general cultural perspective, is either missing or insufficient in Chinese labor studies. While focusing on institutions and their impacts, we tend to overlook that it is often ideologies that inject values into institution building and shape the ways in which institutions actually operate. Thus, my first proposition regarding bringing ideology back into our analysis aims at maintaining a careful scrutiny of the ideas embedded in the institutions. It is the differences in ideas that may cause institutions with the same names to operate differently in different societies. For example, state intervention is often considered an influential factor in the formation of labor relations; but if we examine how the state intervenes and under what kind of belief system, we may realize that there is not necessarily a uniform “state intervention,” and consequently, the explanations generated on the assumption that there was one universal sort of “state intervention” would be misleading. While the first proposition emphasizes ideology as a perspective for seeking causal explanations, the second proposition draws attention to the specific content of the ideology. In other words, we need to examine how a belief system that is different from our own works. By no means, however, is this “worldview” static. Especially during eras of social transformation, the “unsettled periods,” as Ann Swidler calls them, people are often open to new ideas while old ideas do not completely fade away.Footnote ⁴ This means not only that people carry conflicting ideas when acting, but also that they select the new ideas that are most acceptable and compatible with their existing worldview or make the new ones more acceptable by altering them, albeit unconsciously most of the time.

Applying these two propositions to the Chinese case, I suggest that we pay special attention to paternalism, the dominant ideology in China, one that frames power relations as well as influences the ways in which institutions are structured and operate. A few explanations about this assertion seem necessary. Firstly, its ideological dominance does not mean that we will see the word “paternalism” used in an explicit way; instead, “nationalism,” “communism,” and “socialism” appear more visibly in the Communist Party-State-controlled media. Nevertheless, paternalistic principles dominate institutions and modes of power relations. Secondly, although I use the English word “paternalism” here to describe a Chinese governing style, we must understand the different emphases and meanings that this term carries in the Chinese context. One exchange principle is worth mentioning: The benevolent attitude and moral responsibility of a leader are demanded in exchange for the deference to his absolute authority by the led. This principle creates mutual expectations and obligations, sets cognitive boundaries, influences mentalities, shapes behavior, and guides actions. Lastly, the paternalist model of governance provides a certain degree of political equilibrium that sustains its reproduction as a Chinese tradition under different social systems in different historical eras. That does not mean that it confronts no challenges; on the contrary, it is often contested by new social developments over the years and constantly absorbs new elements from other ideologies that are more compatible with these new social formations. Thus I contend that we should not view the paternalist ideology in today's China in a West-versus-East or modernity-versus-tradition dichotomy and predict that the former will eventually wipe out the latter.Footnote ⁵ I will elaborate these points in the following sections in the hope of adding another dimension to our understanding of the remaking of labor history in China.

Ideological Influence on the Relations between the State and Workers

A consensus in the existing literature on Chinese labor issues is that despite the development of the free market and privatization, the Chinese Communist Party-State remains an authoritarian state under which workers do not have strong bargaining power of their own through independent trade unions or any other grassroots organizations. Many discussions focus on the relations between the state and workers. The recent literature has examined the new labor laws and state-led institutions such as revitalized trade unions and their impact on workers.Footnote ⁶ Two parallel paths of development have been traced: On one path, the state intends to use institutions to regulate labor conditions under the market reform and shows an authoritarian state that has remarkable resilience; on the other hand, workers become more and more vulnerable and subject to economic insecurity and exploitation, which increasingly arouse many kinds of worker resistance.Footnote ⁷ In other words, the economic reforms destroyed the socialist welfare system, including job security, but failed to ensure the fair treatment of labor that the state claims; instead, they have empowered employers to follow the global trend to “informalize” employment.Footnote ⁸

The explanations in the literature often target the structural problem that the national state and local governments share no common interests. For example, Gallagher and Dong attribute the weak implementation and enforcement of the Labor Contract Law (2008) to the internal disagreements between the central and local governments since the former prioritizes the pursuit of social justice and the latter pursues its own financial gain by diluting the impact of the law in order to prevent capital flight.Footnote ⁹ Friedman and Lee point out that “fiscal decentralization has generated vested interests amongst local officials to nurture a pro-capital climate.” The central government benefits from local economic growth because of the increased taxation and revenue remission and that is why it is complicit in the weak regulation of labor.Footnote ¹⁰ These explanations are certainly insightful, but important questions remain to be answered. What is the role played by the central government: Is it a protector that cares about social justice for workers or an accomplice that pays only lip service to worker interests with token institutional arrangements? If local governments care only for economic gain and not social justice, how do they secure political legitimacy? If the central government financially benefits from local prosperity via private investment, can we still say that the two levels of the government do not share common interests against labor?

In my opinion, Chinese governments, central and local, have displayed the same conflicting behaviors, acting both as the protector of workers and as the accomplice of capital. The key is how we understand the causes of such conflicts. I suggest that we bring in an ideological perspective through which we can explain what kind of governing model is believed to be the most effective and how it actually guides the behaviors that are deemed conflicting under new social conditions. First of all, by making public its claims, new policies, and institutions, the party-state obviously intends to maintain its patron status above both business groups and the working class. Despite the fact that the market reforms create stark interest disagreements between owners/managers and workers, the state believes that the best way to prevent business and labor classes from developing into independent political powers is to take both parties under its wing by showing them their interests are noticed and respected. That is why the state simultaneously establishes labor laws to protect workers and woos successful private entrepreneurs to join the Communist Party, supposedly a party of workers and peasants.

Secondly, institutions function within certain ideological contexts and then create unique institutional environments that shape the way people act. The institutions might have the same names as their Western counterparts, for example, “labor union,” but they do not necessarily operate in the same way. If we analyze their operations with the same expectations or standards as in the West, we might fail to grasp the dynamics and end up moving in the wrong explanatory direction. Again, take the operation of Chinese trade unions as an example. Most recent studies have moved away from either simply condemning union inaction in collective bargaining or hailing the new unions in private enterprises as a sign of emerging independent unions. Instead, scholars of Chinese labor, whether young or old, now acknowledge that trade unions, although all are under the leadership of All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), do not act the same way. Liu identifies three different patterns of union organizing.Footnote ¹¹ My research indicates that government unions at different administrative levels and unions in private enterprises sit at the bargaining table as mediators between company owners/managers and workers as the state's representative; and in state-owned enterprises, unions are part of management and responsible for the distribution of certain fringe benefits and provision of entertainment.Footnote ¹² We agree that trade unions in China conduct collective bargaining; but the nature and ways of bargaining are not the same compared with trade unions in the developed, democratic countries in the West. Owing to China's unique institutional environment, there is at least one discernible characteristic in their practices: Trade unions under the ACFTU, a top-down bureaucracy, do the collective bargaining mainly as the representative of the state, which wants to demonstrate its protection of workers' interests. The different practices found with enterprise unions in state-owned and privately-owned enterprises exactly mirror the different relations that the state/local governments have with different kinds of enterprise owners/managers: the governments as enterprise owners in state-owned companies and as mediators between private owners and workers in non-state-owned business.Footnote ¹³ Moreover, the discrepancies between government unions' rhetoric and enterprise unions' practice are results of the state's attempt to play the role of a good patron above both business and worker groups. Thus, various union practices can only be understood if we understand the state authority that is articulated and justified within a particular ideology in the reform era.

The state's role is played out under the influence of a traditional government model sustained by a reproducible paternalist ideology. Trade unions—along with various labor laws, regulations, and labor arbitration committees—are the institutions revitalized in the 1990s, the second period of the reform, as the state's responses to workers' calls for justice and welfare. These institutions function as more than just “lip service,” but they do not work as they do under a democratic system despite their emphasis on workers' legal rights. They are used in a paternalistic fashion as the political instruments of a government that needs to regain legitimacy during a large-scale social transformation. As Andrew Nathan rightly points out, the state has indeed bounced back with resilience because of its institution building; but it is an “authoritarian resilience.”Footnote ¹⁴

Ideological Reflection in Two Major Discourses: Relations between Management and Workers

Exploring the relations between management and workers is another important endeavor in the China field today. Michael Burawoy's concept, “labor regime,” has been widely used. Based on his framework, both despotic and hegemonic labor regimes have been identified by different China scholars. Some argue that in China, with an oversupply of labor, the withdrawal of the state, and unions that are not independent, managers are enjoying a free ride in enforcing harsh disciplines while caring less about terrible working conditions; others suggest that hegemonic consent is built through “high wages, generous social benefits, better working conditions, and relatively secure employment of formal workers” in larger enterprises.Footnote ¹⁵ Thus, different from Burawoy's research in advanced capitalist societies where a despotic labor regime is replaced by a hegemonic one, in China, both regimes seem to coexist—the despotic associated with small private factories and the hegemonic with large joint ventures and state-owned enterprises. Recent studies on China's labor issues, including my own, have benefited enormously from Burawoy's theory; however, we should not use a framework supported by research done in a different society in a different time period without necessary revision. While theories help conceptualize reality, we should not limit our understanding only to existing theoretical models and thereby miss the unique configuration in China of seemingly similar factors such as state intervention and managerial despotism. No doubt, we can observe despotic management in China; and no doubt, there is workers' consent. The question is whether they really separately represent two different models or just one model functioning in different institutional settings that contains both elements. Moreover, a model may exhibit a different mechanism and dynamics in different settings and consequently have different theoretical implications.

Some research on China demonstrates an alternative approach. Melissa Wright investigated how a group of corporate managers in a factory in Dongguan, a factory town well known for its cluster of manufacturing sweatshops, established themselves as a new kind of “Chinese” manager.Footnote ¹⁶ She argues that for the purpose of justifying their invasive policies, the managers based their strategies on a paternalist discourse that “their paternal duties include making sure that their workers not only perform their jobs up to standards but that, in the meantime, they live up to Confucian cultural expectations for a ‘good' Chinese daughter.” Other studies also reveal patterns of authority relations that go beyond the sweatshop model and prevalent paternalistic style of leadership in domestic private enterprises (DPEs).Footnote ¹⁷ My own current research on power relations in DPEs finds that even in the small factories where owners/managers do not offer generous benefits as some large DPEs do, they often construct two seemingly conflicting discourses to build consent in their interaction with workers. I call them the “discourse of modernity” and the “discourse of family myth.”

The modernity discourse is often built through so-called “modern management.” When implementing specific managerial techniques, mainly adopted from the West or perceived as western and modern, two principles are emphasized: centralized managerial authority and strict rules associated with detailed penalty codes. Not only do owners/managers believe that they are being “advanced,” but they also try to make workers believe that they ought to follow this “modern” trend. The family myth is created by both “fatherly gestures” and rhetoric on how workers should treat enterprises as their own family. In this approach, owners and managers are self-appointed family heads whose workers should believe not only that they provide them jobs, but also that the owners/managers have authority and knowledge about what is best for them. In the logic of the owners/managers, the conjunction of the two discourses should secure workers' consent to absolute managerial power in exchange for managerial provision of jobs, benefits (optional), and teaching workers how to be “modern.”Footnote ¹⁸ From the workers' side, the consent comes not from their belief that owners/managers actually do anything in their interest, probably the opposite; instead, it is from the hegemony of being “modern” and their expectation of a benevolent leader, stemming from a paternalistic ideology that has often shaped worker actions and demands.

This kind of managerial ideology reflects an overall dominant paternalism. One can easily find similar behavior patterns in relation to the attitudes toward and treatment of workers by both state and enterprise managers. I agree that the ultimate goals for owners and managers are to maximize profits and control high labor turnover; but it is important that we understand that worker consent is believed to be best for profit maximization and labor turnover control and that managers believe that the paternalistic principle of exchange is the best way to manufacture consent since coercion alone is never deemed to be effective in the long run.Footnote ¹⁹ This perspective might be useful as an addition to Burawoy's framework for studying the power relations between managers and workers and explaining contradictory ideas and behaviors manifested in China.

Relations between Workers' Resistance and Working Class Formation in a Unique Ideological Context

The term “working class” is frequently used in the most recent Chinese labor studies. Reacting to an increasing volume of strikes in Honda plants and other factories and a series of suicides committed by a group of extremely young workers at Foxconn (the major Taiwanese electronics subcontractor) plants in China in recent years, scholars and activists argue that the rights and power of Chinese workers are being brought to the fore by these actions and even hail the “rise of the Chinese working class” or acclaim that the “Chinese working class emerges” among a new generation of migrant workers.Footnote ²⁰ Do these recent actions, carried out mostly by younger Chinese workers, really indicate that a new working class, even a formidable, independent political power is in the process of formation, compared with their parents' generation? If so, what are the important factors causing this? To answer these questions, we need to look more deeply into two key issues—the nature of worker protests and the characteristics of this new generation of workers—which are unfortunately not yet found in scholarly publications but constitute a necessary new direction for Chinese labor studies.

Radical social transformations are often contentious, and China is not an exception. Nor is it just a recent phenomenon: Worker protests have never ceased to happen since the beginning of the economic reforms in the late 1970s. Ching Kwan Lee's book Against the Law is thus far one of the most sophisticated and profound studies of labor protests during the reform era. She examines two kinds of protests: “protests of desperation” by veteran state workers in the industrial rustbelt and “protests against discrimination” by young peasant migrant workers in the export-oriented sunbelt. Significantly, protests in both regions by both groups of workers share characteristics: targeting local officials, cellular activism, fragmentation of interests, and legalistic rhetoric. Lee argues that, despite the persistence of rural-urban dualism in social structure that separates the two groups of workers, the Chinese state strategy of decentralized accumulation and legal authoritarianism are the two main factors that have shaped labor protests in contemporary China.

Although Lee considers both structural and ideological causes of this protest pattern, I disagree with her suggestion that legalism has become a hegemonic ideology on which workers' subjectivity is founded. As discussed earlier, the Chinese state's way to promote legal rights and legal institutions is not the same as in Western democratic countries. The newly highlighted legal discourse may enable workers to be aware of their citizens' rights, and the “rule of law” is undeniably an advance compared with the arbitrary dictatorship. But the state still articulates citizens' rights to workers as a state protection bestowed upon them. In other words, the moral responsibility of the state to care for its worker-citizens not only existed under Maoist socialism, but has also continued in the reform era. The difference is that the Maoist idea that the state grants privileges to workers in terms of employment, welfare, and political status is replaced by the new rhetoric that the state grants citizens legal rights. The exchange pattern between the state and workers nevertheless remains paternalistic. Paternalism as a dominant ideology, modernized at best, also sets cognitive and behavioral boundaries for workers who participate in protests. Some of their demands, such as “who will take care of us,” keep them in a dependent position categorized by the state as a “weak social group” that always needs protection and help from the state. Workers become unwilling participants in constructing the current power relations and acquiescent to the top-down approaches to their problems—although their demands are bottom-up. Could this be the reason that the renowned Chinese labor historian Elizabeth Perry points out that if handled skillfully by state authorities, protests may even enhance regime legitimacy rather than gain political autonomy for workers to change the ubiquitous power configuration?Footnote ²¹

Is this still true for the new generation of workers? By “new generation” we often refer to young workers who were born and grew up under the market reform launched in the late 1970s. This new generation consists of two segments: the children of the former state enterprise workers from the Maoist period and the children of early peasant migrant workers. Within the latter group, some were born in cities, some came to cities with their parents as children, and others were raised by their grandparents in the countryside while their parents were wage earners in cities. This social group did not attract much special attention until the media exposure of fourteen suicides committed by some of its members within a five-month period of 2010 at Foxconn plants in Guangdong Province.Footnote ²² Despite the media attention, we do not know much about them. We are not certain who they are and what they think. We may suspect that younger migrant workers are much less attached to their rural roots than their parents, as they have rarely engaged in any farming in their life; but we do not yet have sufficient studies of what that detachment actually means. We are also not clear whether this group is less educated or more educated, nor what the implications are.Footnote ²³ A similar diversity of views is found with regard to the suicides. Some scholars take them as “the weapons of the weak to voice their depression” and others as a display of their vulnerability and lack of endurance faced with the hardships of industrial wage labor.Footnote ²⁴ Still others think that the new generation has a stronger need for democracy than their parents and thus are the hope for an emerging working class.Footnote ²⁵ In the absence of sufficient evidence and convincing explanations, these statements remain predetermined assumptions or, at best, educated guesses. These new issues in Chinese labor studies need to be explored by pioneering research.

Is this new generation of Chinese workers forming a new working class? Following E. P. Thompson's tradition of labor studies, we remind ourselves that the formation of a working class is not just connected to workplace struggles, but also to a whole range of life experiences and subjective responses to exploitation.Footnote ²⁶ At least four areas of life experience are crucial for us to understand the new generation in comparison with the previous generation before making any generalizations. First and foremost is the area of production. We would want to know how young workers deal with everyday work tasks and skills, wages and benefits, harsh labor conditions, and managerial disciplining in comparison with the previous generation. Personally, I am most interested in their views of authority, social status, social justice and social change, and how their views are informed by their life experience, received tradition, and new ideas. For example, after the media spotlight on the suicide incidents in Foxconn, the government started training programs specially designed for the second generation of migrant workers.Footnote ²⁷ What kind of reaction do they have to this kind of program, and what kind of impact does it have on them?

Three remaining important areas for new research are consumption, community, and family. Some scholars—Pun Ngai and Hairong Yan, for example—have explored the impact of the newly formed consumer culture on female factory and domestic workers, respectively. Yan explains how the “pas de deux of consumption and production” creates a mirage of modernity that influences workers' subject position.Footnote ²⁸ How does this particular position, different from that of their frugal parents' generation (which grew up during times of scarcity and asceticism), influence the world views of the younger generation, which in turn shape their aspirations, ambitions, and the objectives of their collective action against their economic and political plights? Another generational difference worth attention is the fast growth of the so-called “netizen” in cyberspace, especially among young workers. The possibility of a new internet community that facilitates collective actions and leads to independent organizations outside the state apparatus that we have seen elsewhere in the world should be explored in Chinese labor studies as well. The last but not least generational difference lies in family relations. For the previous generation, family was often the central concern in deciding on a job or whether to take part in protests.Footnote ²⁹ Is this still true with the new generation? As many of the young workers are their parents' only child, are their ways of dealing with family and views of employment and protests different from those of their parents? Scholars of Chinese labor need to fill an empirical void by studying this new generation of workers, their thoughts and life experience, as well as the interplay between the two.

Opportunity and Challenge: A Conclusion

The thirty-year economic reforms have generated one of the greatest social transformations in history, affecting the work and lives of hundreds of millions of people. Its unprecedented scale, speed, and scope provide exciting opportunities for scholars of Chinese labor while posing many challenges to them. The ongoing transformation is a complicated and dynamic process that is far from the finish line. China's ever-changing reality, with new players constantly joining the game, could quickly make previous generalizations seem premature, if not dated. This changing reality not only influences how scholars choose their research topics but also pushes them to reframe their approaches and gather new evidence. China is currently at a critical historical juncture. The increasing polarization between rich and poor and mounting dissatisfaction of social groups make the outcry for political reform ever louder and more urgent at the start of a period of personnel change within the top national leadership, which itself faces issues of economic sustainability and political legitimacy. What role will Chinese labor play in the foreseeable turbulence? Reportedly, a growing labor shortage is taking place in China. If that is true, could it shake China's status as the workshop of the world? Could it change the current power asymmetry in labor relations? What impact will another new player—the labor NGOs funded by international advocacy groups, foundations and development agencies—have?Footnote ³⁰ To answer these interesting questions, new in-depth research is imperative. Equally important is resisting the temptation to make sweeping generalizations or quick conclusions based on what we wish to see.

Furthermore, within this complicated and dynamic transformation, scholars of Chinese labor understand that all players—the state, owners/managers, and workers—have to negotiate their way. This means that during large-scale social changes, these actors interact with each other within structural, institutional, and ideological constraints, and their interaction in turn produces both intended and unintended consequences. In this essay, I mainly suggest that an ideological perspective may help us find missing analytical pieces that will help us explain labor issues in China. This perspective would direct us to locate the unique value system embedded in institution building and practices in China. It may also enable us to situate institutions with the same names as in other societies in a Chinese ideological context and better understand the significance of the institutional differences both in content and in practice. I also point out that this perspective allows us to examine the specific value system that explains and justifies authority. Rejecting a dichotomous view of the value system in a “tradition versus modernity” fashion, I examined how the players in this labor game either act within the context of conflicting ideas or find their own ways to make the different ideas more compatible by selecting and altering them. These are some of the new directions that Chinese labor studies are taking or need to take in order to understand the conditions, experience, mentalities, and protagonism of workers in the world's workshop.