Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …

Grand Strategy And China's Search For Prestige, Lukas Danner

Lukas K. Danner

No abstract provided.

Interview For Nhk (Japan) Broadcast "China: Visioning The New Enormous Economic Bloc", Lukas Danner

Lukas K. Danner

No abstract provided.

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Eli D Friedman

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …

Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor – capital and labor – state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to …

Alienated Politics: Labour Insurgency And The Paternalistic State In China, Eli Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Is there a labour movement in China? This contribution argues that China does not have a labour movement, but that contestation between workers, state and capital is best characterized as a form of ‘alienated politics’. Widespread worker resistance is highly effective at the level of the firm be-cause of its ability to inflict losses on capital and disrupt public order. But authoritarian politics in China prevent workers from formulating political demands. Despite the spectacular repressive capacity of the state, the central government has in fact responded to highly localized resistance by passing generally pro-labour legislation over the past decade. The …

Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the countermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus …

The Power Of The Brics In World Trade And Growth, Analysing The Macroeconomic Impacts Within And Across The Bloc, Ahmed Khalid

Ahmed Khalid

Extract: The BRICS is a composition of five emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The five countries together represent about 42 per cent of the world's population, over 24 per cent of all land, and about 20 per cent of the world's total GDP, contributing a combined nominal GDP of more than US$14.9 trillion. Over the past decade trade between the BRICS and other regions such as North America, the EU and Japan has surpassed the US$2 trillion mark. Trade within the BRICS countries is growing at an average of 28 per cent per annum, reaching more …

Evaluating Job Training In Two Chinese Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Niels-Hugo Blunch, Christopher J. O'Leary

Christopher J. O'Leary

Recent years have seen a surge in the evidence on the impacts of active labor market programs for numerous countries. However, little evidence has been presented on the effectiveness of such programs in China. Recent economic reforms, associated massive lay-offs, and accompanying public retraining programs make China fertile ground for rigorous impact evaluations. This study evaluates retraining programs for laid-off workers in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan using a comparison group design. To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of its kind in China. The evidence suggests that retraining helped workers find jobs in Wuhan, but had little …

The International Dimension Of Democratization: Comparing Transnational Civil Society And Social Linkages In Taiwan And China, Su-Mei Ooi

Su-Mei Ooi

There has been considerable interest since the end of the Cold War, in the international dimensions of democratization. Of particular interest in this paper are transnational civil society and social linkages, which have been found in Taiwan to have contributed to the growth and development of an effective democracy movement in the pre-transition phase during the 1970s, culminating in the democratic breakthrough of 1986. Are there equivalent transnational civil society linkages in China today? In the post-Cold War globalized environment, should such linkages be denser despite concerted efforts to curb them? If so, are these transnational civil society linkages helping …

The Role Of Great Powers In China's Grand Strategy, Lukas Danner

Lukas K. Danner

No abstract provided.

Increasing Environmental Performance In A Context Of Low Governmental Enforcement: Evidence From China, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

China's Maritime Strategic Agenda, Christopher Rahman

Chris Rahman

Just what’s China up to at sea? To casual observers, including a burgeoning legion of journalists, commentators and bloggers, China seems set on a path to becoming a major force on the world’s oceans, developing bluewater naval power with which to protect the Chinese state’s expanding economic ties to far-flung corners of the world and project political and even strategic influence. Such observers rightly note the rapid growth in China’s international seaborne trade, its shipping and shipbuilding sectors, and its marine economy and maritime interests in general. China’s naval developments over the past decade have been widely commented on, especially …

Ballistic Missiles In China's Anti-Taiwan Blockade Strategy, Christopher Rahman

Chris Rahman

No abstract provided.

An Assessment Of South China Tiger Reintroduction Potential In Hupingshan And Houhe National Nature Reserves, China, Yiyuan Qin, Philip J. Nyhus, Courtney L. Larson, Charles J.W. Carroll, Jeff Muntifering, Thomas D. Dahmer, Lu Jun, Ronald L. Tilson

Philip J. Nyhus

Human-caused biodiversity loss is a global problem, large carnivores are particularly threatened, and the tiger (Panthera tigris) is among the world’s most endangered large carnivores. The South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) is the most critically endangered tiger subspecies and is considered functionally extinct in the wild. The government of China has expressed its intent to reintroduce a small population of South China tigers into a portion of their historic range as part of a larger goal to recover wild tiger populations in China. This would be the world’s first major tiger reintroduction program. A free-ranging population of 15–20 tigers …

Navigating Uncertainty: The Survival Strategies Of Religious Ngos In China, Jonathan Tam, Reza Hasmath

Reza Hasmath

The Contemporary Ethnic Minority In China: An Introduction, Margaret Maurer-Fazio, Reza Hasmath

Reza Hasmath

Job Acquisition, Retention, And Outcomes For Ethnic Minorities In Urban China, Reza Hasmath, Benjamin Ho

Reza Hasmath