ABSTRACT
The development of China’s legal system since the current reforms were launched by the late Deng Xiaoping in 1978, has generated an abundant legal scholarship in China as well as in Western countries. Just as important as the laws themselves, are the Chinese discourses about legal reforms since they shed light on the underlying motivations guiding the adoption of specific laws and regulations. This chapter will discuss the Chinese legal reforms in labor law, analyzing both the discourses and the legal texts. What, in essence, prompted the National People’s Congress, China’s legislative organ, to adopt, in 1994, the Labor Law of the People’s Republic of China, promulgated in 1995? It will be argued that the new Labor Law was, in fact, conceived as a tool to bestow legitimacy on the new economic order envisioned by the Chinese leadership, namely, the “socialist market economy.” At the time, the Chinese leadership decided to promote economic growth as a means to retain or regain legitimacy following the Tiananmen Square tragic events of 1989. This new project called for a revision of the existing labor laws and regulations, now deemed outdated and unfit for the upcoming economic changes.
