Chinese Workers and Peasants

1. Chinese Workers and Peasants

2. Mao’s Legacies • Industrial development in 1950s • Modeled after the Soviet Union • Produced enlarged proletariat • Workers overwhelmingly concentrated in cities • Promotion of rural industrialization • Employees in rural factories not strictly ``workers”

3. Industrialization in 1950s

5. Pre-Reform Workers • Contrasts with workers in capitalist states during early stage of industrialization • More numerous and more spatially concentrated • Work units directly distributed goods and services to employees • ``Iron rice bowl”: security of employment • Propaganda image of ``leading class”

6. Pre-Reform Workers • Contrasts with workers in former socialist countries in East Europe • Very difficult to move from farmer to worker status • Very difficult to move from one unit to another • Elimination of material incentive systems • Highly accentuated work unit system

7. Changes during Economic Reforms • Altered the nature of working-class organization and experiences within traditional state and collective industrial firms • Produced new (or revived from the pre-socialist era) segments of the working class outside of traditional sectors

8. Township and Village Enterprises • A most dynamic sector of the economy • Owned or supervised by townships or villages (not state-owned) • Can be collective, private firms, joint ventures, or even foreign-owned • Workers are proletarians, not cultivators • Working conditions vary widely

10. Urban New Enterprises • Self-employed individuals or households • Private firms • Bulk of urban private enterprise activity is concentrated in commerce and services • Firms established with Asian capital • Firms established with Western capital

12. Reforming State Firms • 1978 - 1984: eliminated Cultural Revolution practices • 1984 - 1992: required state and collective firms increasingly to operate in a marketized environment • 1992 - present: major changes in the internal labor practices

13. Stage I: 1978 - 1984 • Repudiate the Cultural Revolution legacy in state and collective firms • Remuneration issues • removed the ban on material incentives • implemented bonus and piece-rate schemes • rescinded the post-1957 wage freeze • eased shortages of housing, food, and consumer goods

14. Stage II: 1984 - 1992 • Subject state and collective firms to a more fully marketized environment • New system of employment based upon limited term contracts in 1986, but ``Iron rice bowl” remained largely intact • Urban workers’ hostility toward reforms • Bankruptcy Law in 1987

15. Stage III: 1992 - present • Dismantle job security and benefits • Give management broad autonomy to hire and fire workers and to decide wages and bonus payments • Make it easier for individuals to obtain, quit, and change jobs on their own initiative • Employment of rural contract workers

16. Decline of Workers’ Status • Explosive growth of new (or revived) types of factories in which workers are compensated and treated quite poorly • Erosion of the privileged treatment of workers in state firms

17. Worker Protests • Rising complaints, petitions, slow-downs, strikes, sabotage, physical violence, etc. • Labor dispute mediation committees • Labor Law was passed in 1994

18. Farmers As a Social Group • Interests of farmers • Prices of agricultural commodities • Prices of industrial inputs • State support for rural development • Taxes and assessments • accountability of local officials • stability of regime policies, especially the maintenance of household farming

19. Interest Articulation • Public articulation of agrarian interests: • At the grassroots by farmers themselves • At higher or elite levels of the political hierarchy by ``advocates”

20. Elite Advocates • Rural deputies to the NPC • Agrarian research community of State Council and Central Committee institutes • Agrarian research community of academies and universities • Officials in ministries such as Agriculture • Editors and journalists in mass media

21. Grassroots Articulation • Villagers express grievances and demands • legal system • village elections • appeal to officials at higher levels • letters to central agencies • letters to newspapers • protest • Farmers do not have a mass organization

22. Regime Receptiveness • 1978-83: high responsiveness • allocated new resources to agricultural sector • raised procurement prices • abolished the commune system (collective farming) • implemented ``Household Responsibility System” (family contract farming) • peasant demand and elite advocacy

23. Regime Receptiveness • 1984-90: low responsiveness • accumulating problems in agriculture • grain output stagnated until 1989 • rural real per capita income stagnated • agricultural investment from all sources lagged • state lowered procurement prices • farmer protests, violence, and riots • intense advocacy of agrarian interests

24. Since the 1990s • Rural protests, demonstrations, and riots • Regime attention to agriculture increased significantly • pressure on local officials • to increase investment in agriculture • to decrease farmers’ financial burdens • extension of family land contracts • passage of a ``Law on Agriculture”