The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace

State workers in China have until recently enjoyed the iron rice bowl of comprehensive cradle-to-grave benefits and lifetime employment. This central institution in Chinese politics emerged over the course of various crises that swept through China’s industrial sector prior to and after revolution in 1949. Frazier explores critical phases in the expansion of the Chinese state during the middle third of the twentieth century to reveal how different labour institutions reflected state power. While the ‘iron rice bowl’ is usually seen as an outgrowth of Communist labour policy, Frazier’s account shows that is has longer historical roots. As a product of the Chinese state, the iron rice bowl’s dismantling in the 1990s has raised sensitive issues about the way in which the contemporary Chinese state exerts control over urban industrial society. This book sheds light on state and society relations in China under the Nationalist and Communist regimes.

• Offers an interesting way of understanding the Chinese revolution of 1949 and the power of the Chinese Communist Party • Shows how state-owned factories in China adopted the ‘iron rice bowl’ of cradle-to-grave benefits and permanent employment • Draws from recently opened archival sources in China as well as internal documents from some of the oldest factories in China

List of tables; List of acronyms; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Labor management and its opponents, 1927–1937; 3. Welfare and wages in wartime; 4. Takeover policies and labor politics, 1949–1952; 5. Adjusting to the command economy; 6. Enterprise perspectives on the command economy; 7. The rise of ‘party committee factories’; 8. Conclusion; Archives consulted; Bibliography; Index.