Atomized Incorporation
Chinese Workers and the Aftermath of China's Rise

This book investigates why Chinese factory workers might not be politically satisfied but nonetheless only engage in economic protests.

Sungmin Rho (Author)

9781009161206, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 August 2023

276 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

Atomized Incorporation examines why the Chinese regime selectively tolerates workers' collective action within single factories and what this means for the country's long-term political resilience. It investigates the implications of state-labor relations in contemporary China and suggests that it has evolved away from overt coercion to limited incorporation. Based on two years of in-depth fieldwork, Rho uncovers how ordinary workers think, believe, and behave in this changing socio-political environment. She demonstrates that labor grievances have become more politicized and finds that the current approach to economic grievance resolutions demobilizes the emergence of labor movements by rewarding those with collective action resources within individual workplaces. Rho argues that though this limited state of incorporation allows workers to express discontent at wages and working conditions, it also denies them the opportunity to make claims about structural problems and does not effectively enhance political loyalty in the long run.

1. Introduction
2. The political costs of labor coercion: the changing socioeconomic environment since the 2000s
3. Atomized incorporation: regime response to the changing environment
4. Politicization of labor discontent and blame attribution
5. Workplace mobilization and collective action
6. Interest-based collective action and firm-level patterns of labor protests
7. Discursive opportunities and collective action at law-abiding firms
8. State-labor relations in the Xi era and beyond.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]