ABSTRACT

What has the globalization of capital and capitalist relations meant for the global working class? The transnationalization of capitalist production has been instrumental in transforming the working class, and one of the most significant consequences is the proletarianization of rural labour on a massive scale in the Global South and their integration into the circuits of global capital. In recent decades, this is most starkly witnessed in China, where hundreds of millions of rural population, drawn by employment in foreign-invested companies, have joined the ranks of the working class, making the Chinese working class the largest in the world. This transformation has been accompanied by the multiplication of labour protests and strikes for better wages and conditions often directed at transnational companies and their local subcontractors, making arguably the highest number of strikes in any single country. As the site of interactions between national and global forces over the last three decades, China is not only at the receiving end of transnational capital; the Chinese government is also actively developing state-owned industry and fostering indigenous private firms with global reach and extending trade and investment abroad in an attempt to establish China as a major global economic power. Additionally, the Chinese working class is, to a considerable degree, simultaneously embedded in the circuits of global capital, and also shaped deeply by China’s statist social and industrial system and isolated politically from the rest of the global working class. Reflecting on China’s experience, this study sets out to discuss the implications of the interplay between transnational and national economic and political forces for the reconfiguration of class relations and transformation of the Chinese and global working class.