Bringing Class Struggles Back: A Marxian Analysis of the State and Class Relations in China

ABSTRACT

This article finds both the ‘weakening-state’ hypothesis of neo-liberalism and the ‘state as autonomous actor’ approach adopted by many current China studies dissatisfying towards an understanding of the Chinese state. The authors have therefore conducted a Marxian investigation of the Chinese state. We argue that the state is socially embedded; it is the field and condensation of class struggle. The gulf separating global capital and internal migrant workers on interests such as wage standards, pensions, and other labour regulations in China is a major form of class struggle, which continues to shape the state’s policies and behaviours. The attack on Chinese workers by global capital after the global economic crisis in 2008 precipitated a new wave of migrant worker protests and contributed to their articulation of worker demands on the Chinese state. To substantiate these arguments, we examine the (global) capital and (migrant) labour relations during and after the global economic crisis in 2008, with detailed analysis of the Honda strike and Yue Yuen strike, which took place in 2010 and 2014, respectively. The central theme is that the Chinese state’s development and labour policies can be fully comprehended only by bringing class struggle back into the analysis.

Keywords:

• state
• class struggle
• economic crisis
• China
• migrant workers

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This part is partially drawn from Elaine Hui’s PhD research. For more information about the Marxian debate on the state, see Hui (in press).

2 Its gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in 2010 was 10.4%, in 2011 9.3%, in 2012 7.7%, and in 2013 7.7% (see http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG).

3 Some studies manifest a more sophisticated analysis of the Chinese state and the state–society relations (see Lee, 2007; Lee & Yonghong, 2013; Pun, Chan, & Chan, 2010), but they have not explicitly highlighted what kind of analytical approach they have adopted to examine the Chinese state. This article differs from these studies in two aspects. First, it has applied the Marxian perspective to investigate the Chinese State. Second, instead of focusing only specifically on China, this article has engaged with a debate of wider conceptual/analytical significance, that is, the role of state in global capitalism. China is a case used to illustrate our argument.

4 This paper highlights the class antagonism between global capital and migrant workers, due to the fact that most of the labour-intensive and export-oriented industries are owned by overseas investors. However, the authors do not intend to dismiss the exploitative role of local Chinese capital.

5 One of the reasons that this article focuses on the period during and after the 2008 global economic crisis is that labour strikes prior to this period have been widely studied (such as Chan 2010; Lee, 2007; Pun et al., 2010) while an overview of class relations during this particular period is not available.

6 See Chan (2010) for the analysis of changing state, labour, and capital relations before the economic crisis in 2008; Hui and Chan (2012) and Chan (2014) for an analysis after the crisis till 2011.

7 Many NGO and government reports have elaborated this strategy. See, for example, IHLO (2009b), CLB (2009).

8 Eric Wright has categorised workers’ powers as marketplace bargaining power, workplace bargaining power, and association power (2000). Wright’s concepts have been used by Silver to analyse the pattern of strikes and globalisation (Silver, 2003).

9 It was reported that workers from a Hyundai supplier factory in Beijing had launched a strike to demand higher wages after or around the time of the Honda strike. Adding to this, workers from two Toyota factories in Tianjin, Atsumitec Co (a supplier to Honda) and Ormon (a supplier to Honda, Ford and BWM), followed the example of their counterparts and went on strike in June.

10 The strike waves since May 2010 took place all over the country, including Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Henan, Yunan, and Chongqing. See Asian Weekly 23, Volume 2010, Economist 31 July–6 August 2010.

11 However, Poulantzas also reminds us that the relative autonomy of the state is to reproduce the capitalist class’s long-term dominance through offering short-term benefits to the exploited class so that they will not revolt against the capitalist system.

12 Similar approaches of bringing the role of class struggle in analysing Chinese state and labour relations can also be seen in Chan (2012) and Hui and Chan (2012).

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong (project no. CityU 140313) and the City University of Hong Kong for the financial support to their research. This paper was partly influenced by Elaine Hui’s PhD research at the University of Kassel, Germany. She thanks Prof. Christoph Scherrer for his advice and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung for offering her full scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Chris King-Chi Chan

Chris King-Chi Chan is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. He has published widely on Chinese labour, including the book The challenge of labour in China (Routledge, 2010) and articles in leading journals in China, labour and development studies.

Elaine Sio-Ieng Hui

Elaine Sio-ieng Hui is Assistant Professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations, the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research interests include critical state theories, legal theories, class consciousness, civil society, social welfare and labour relations in China. She has published in peer-reviewed journal, such as British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Industrial Relations, China Quarterly, and International Labor Review.