ABSTRACT
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), trade unions under socialist systems have maintained the classic dualism formulated by Lenin whereby trade unions functioned as the “transmission belt” between the communist party and workers, serving the “top-down” function of increasing productivity by organizing labor for the purpose of developing the economy, as well as the “bottom-up” function of communicating workers’ demands for realizing better working conditions and benefi ts.1 The basic function of this relationship is symbiotic, intermediating between the mutual needs of the state and society. On the one hand trade unions are legally institutionalized autonomous organizations, but on the other hand they are characterized as mechanisms to lure the masses into order. In China, however, trade unions have not placed the state and society on equal footing, but existed in a patron-client hierarchy where the state needed the worker to realize its nationalistic objectives. The worker needs the state to protect a privileged status and income against the background of an oversupply of cheap labor and extremely restricted life chances for the overwhelming majority of the population.2 Hence, the state and society in socialist China, much like in advanced nations such as Northern Europe, Central Europe, Japan, etc. have formed a certain type of corporatism, namely a system of labor interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, supports.3 as state corporatism.3
