Introduction

The eyes of the world are on China’s workplaces, at the time of writing, as rarely before during this decade. As we were finalizing the last few draft chapters of this volume, during June 2010, a higher than normal frequency of reporting of what were to emerge as major stories about developments in China’s enterprises was breaking in the international news media. For ‘China-watchers’, this was a boon, if not a blessing. There were, for instance, accounts of an allegedly high rate of employee suicides of mostly young production-line workers, at the Shenzen factories of the world’s largest electronics manufacturing multinationals, Foxconn, a subcontractor for leading brand-name Western and Japanese companies like Apple, Dell and Sony, all based in the Special Economic Zone adjacent to Hong Kong. In response, the Taiwan-owned firm in question said it was going to increase the basic wages of its employees in China by 30 per cent immediately, and a total of 122 per cent in October (Garnaut 2010; Hille and Mitchell 2010; China Labour Bulletin 2010b).