ABSTRACT
The labor organizing and militancy that China’s SOE sector experienced in the late 1990s continued into the fi rst two to three years of the new millennium. However, since then, it has, for the moment at least, tapered out. In some ways, China’s labor movement now appears to have returned to a similar state as the early 1990s. Chinese workers in the private sector are more likely to be found engaging in various forms of organizing in response to the specifi c conditions of exploitation that characterize their contribution to national development. In these battles, although China’s private-sector workers today will fi ght for the right to organize freely elected unions, they do not fi ght for the kinds of workers’ democracy that SOE workers demanded in the 1990s. Despite their determination to challenge their capitalist employers (be they foreign or Chinese) over issues of wages and scheduling, China’s private-sector workers are far less likely to challenge the right of capital to monopolize ownership and control of enterprises.
