Post-socialist China: Labour relations in Korean-managed factories

Abstract

How are labour relations practiced in Korean-managed factories in China? It is often said that labour relations in Korean transnational factories are abusive, even despotic. In this article, I argue that the disciplinary nature of labour relations in Korean factories in China is more complex and so multi-dimensional that they cannot be characterised as a simple economic matter of labour exploitation. These relations entail hierarchical segregation, normalising workers' behaviour through fines and salary reductions, personal degradation and dissimilar cultural practices.

Key words:

• Post-socialism
• labour management and control
• China
• Korean-managed factories
• overseas investment

Acknowledgement

This article benefited greatly from the help of many friends in China and Korea. The author also thanks Amy Hanser, Kevin Hewison and Ching Kwan Lee for valuable comments and Eunjin Cho for her research assistance.

Notes

¹ In the city of Qingdao, Shandong, the majority of foreign capital arrived from South Korea. In 2004, there were 5,700 registered Korean enterprises in Qingdao, with a total investment of over $2.4 billion.

² According to Mr Xilai Bo, an official from the State Council, China's per capita GDP is still only 1/35 of that of the USA, 1/31 of that of Japan and 1/11 of that of South Korea.

³ See the report in Chosun Ilbo (20 September 2003), which includes an interview with Zhang Zhixiong, a representative from the labour union at Beijing Hyundai.

⁴ According to a report from Chosun Ilbo (30 November 2004), one Korean manager in Dongguan confessed: “We need one thousand workers right now, but only have seven hundreds instead. Our productivity is also only 60 to 70% of what we expect. In 1989, when we started our factory, there were more than four thousand applicants for two hundred positions.”

⁵ When new workers are hired, the Korean factories present and disseminate the managerial ideology of the company. This is what I call, “Thought Education” for workers. This process intends to reshape the thinking of socialist Chinese workers through capitalist moral exhortations and the promise of the material rewards for sincere, hard-working behaviour.

⁶ In fact, as already noted, these workers are not “socialist” peasants from the pre-reform period, and they have almost no experiences of working at state enterprises. However, Korean managers operate with the perception that the workers remain “socialist” due to their lack of experience in capitalist enterprises.

⁷ This is what Harry Braverman called, “The Habituation of the Worker to the Capitalist Mode of Production.”

⁸ Foucault also called this “scientific classification,” the development of practical rationalization. For example, the science of psychology separates those who are mad or insane from those who are not.

⁹ Interviews with workers are useful to provide critical first-hand primary information about their actual experiences in dealing with Korean managers. However, some workers refused to be interviewed, fearing talking with another Korean and the possible punishment from their managers. My national origin as a Korean has been a limit in most of the interviews with workers, since most of them perceive me as another person on the side of Korean managers most of the time. It was much harder to make Chinese workers feel comfortable with me than other interviews with workers in non-Korean factories.

¹⁰ This ambivalence stands in contrast to the relationship between Taiwanese managers and Chinese bureaucrats in Fujian (see Hsing, 1997).

¹¹ According to Walder (1986: 16), the socialist state enterprise is neither capitalistic (market) nor pre-modern traditional, but rather it is a distinctively socialist organisation. As a socialist work organisation, the Chinese state enterprise provided basic welfare to its workers such as permanent job security, training, housing, medical care, pensions and various kinds of subsidies such as day care and schooling for children, and sometimes even employment for spouse and children.