ABSTRACT
In Chapters 3 and 4, we saw that the wage was always one of the main concerns during strikes, but wage demands were always within the limits of workers’ legal rights (Lee, 2007a). In July 2005 and 2006, the Shenzhen government significantly increased the minimum wage rate. As the workers did not ask for this increase during the strike, though, it is reasonable to assume that it was introduced in response to the shortage of labour rather than to placate the strikers. In July 2007, however, contrary to the workers’ expectations, the municipal authorities did not increase the minimum wage as they had done in the previous two years. This pay freeze triggered a new round of strikes in the region. These first forced the factories to raise their wages to above the legal minimum, and then the city government to increase the minimum wage in October 2007. This confirmed the significance of state regulation and legality in the ‘politics of production’ in China (Burawoy, 1985; Lee, 2007a), but contradicted Lee’s (2007a) proposal that migrant workers’ actions were based on their legal rights as citizens.
