ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an analysis of how workers in China’s SOEs have responded to the changing nature of those enterprises during the reform period since 1978. In particular we examine the causes of the rising incidence of labour unrest among SOE employees from the second half of the 1990s onwards, as drastic restructuring of the state sector began to take place and unemployment reached its highest levels in China for decades. Protests over lay-offs, bankruptcies and unpaid pensions and wages reached the stage where parts of the present reform programme became threatened with delay as local and national governments sought to contain workers’ resentment. Yet, as will be seen below, sometimes these efforts to mollify workers succeeded only in further stoking their anger at what they perceived to be patronizing and token concessions that did not address their most important concerns.
