Inside China's Automobile Factories
The Politics of Labor and Worker Resistance

Lu Zhang explains how labor relations in the auto industry and broader social economy can be expected to develop in China in the coming decades.

Lu Zhang (Author)

9781316500569, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 July 2015

258 pages, 26 b/w illus. 1 map 22 tables
23 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.45 kg

'This is a great book! Lu Zhang provides a comprehensive sociological analysis of work and workers' activism in China's auto industry during its years of ultra-rapid growth at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The volume is unique since it offers a broad picture based on extensive field studies of major automobile manufacturing sites of different joint ventures of multinational carmakers and Chinese state-owned automakers.' Boy Lüthje, The China Journal

In Inside China's Automobile Factories, Lu Zhang explores the current conditions, subjectivity, and collective actions of autoworkers in the world's largest and fastest-growing automobile manufacturing nation. Based on years of fieldwork and extensive interviews conducted at seven large auto factories in various regions of China, Zhang provides an inside look at the daily factory life of autoworkers and a deeper understanding of the roots of rising labor unrest in the auto industry. Combining original empirical data and sophisticated analysis that moves from the shop floor to national political economy and global industry dynamics, the book develops a multilayered framework for understanding how labor relations in the auto industry and broader social economy can be expected to develop in China in the coming decades.

1. Introduction
2. Industrial restructuring and labor force transformation in the Chinese automobile industry
3. The labor market and social composition in the automobile industry
4. Organization of production and factory social order
5. Hegemonic consent? Formal worker's compliance and resistance
6. Temporary workers' struggles and the paradox of labor force dualism
7. The state's response: the making of labor contract law and boundary-drawing strategy
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Construction & heavy industry [KNJ], Manufacturing industries [KND], Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], International business [KJK], Economics of industrial organisation [KCD], Sociology: work & labour [JHBL]