ABSTRACT
Following the economic reform and restructuring in 1980s, several tendencies and factors about China’s labour relations are being experienced:
First of all, the former interest-integrated labour-capital relations, in which the state stood for the entire society, has transferred to employment relations between two independent interest groups, namely the employers and the workers. Under command economy, labour relations merely composed of the state and the employees. The latter had no independent identity besides the citizenship of the state. Such a relationship determined an administrative-dominated industrial relation system that emphasised the only difference between management and workers was the difference of socialist division of labour. However, under the market transition, interest segregation between the state and market has taken place, with market evolution characterising a separation of interests between the employers and the employees as well. Employment relations become dominant so that workers undertake a subordinate role, compared to the capital, in the labour market.
