ABSTRACT
The crisis of capitalism in the West encountered a crisis of state socialism in the East from the 1970s. The reform and opening policy of China since 1978 to some extent has bailed out Western capitalism from the crisis by providing an ‘unlimited’ supply of low-cost and unorganised labour. From the 1970s, even the newly industrialised countries (NICs), such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, were subjected to labour cost rises caused by a shortage of labour and rising worker protests and organisation (Deyo, 1989). China then became a new haven of manufacturing investment and global production as soon as it was open to the world. The label ‘Made in China’ can now be seen everywhere in the world. South China has become a new global manufacturing centre, comparable to Manchester in the early nineteenth century, Birmingham in the early twentieth century, and the Asian tiger economies in the 1970s, but with a much bigger scale and scope. The potential of Chinese workers to change this condition has significant meaning for global labour politics. This study was designed to contribute to the debate on globalisation and labour with reference to China.
