ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 analyses how the structural reforms that began in 1979, and which in industry went into high gear in the early 1990s, have produced significant social change for the Chinese working class. Economically, many urban-resident workers even rural migrants have seen their incomes and standards of living rise, but many others – especially those who have become unemployed or have had to find new work due to industrial restructuring and the rise of the labour market – have not. Those who remain employed in state industry have lost the social welfare benefits that came with their jobs in state-owned firms. Socially, the working class expanded exponentially, diversified radically, became subject to capitalistic wage labour, moved out of its tight-knit workplace-based residential communities, and lost both its high social status and any political influence it had achieved in enterprise operations. Its ideas about itself and its place in the world were transformed to reflect its new subordinations. The economic and social changes were brought about mainly by the Party/state and China’s new capitalistic forces without much worker participation, and workers have not been able to resist them, though they have managed to reverse a few of the worst effects. Workers played a bigger role in forging their own ideational adaptations rather than adopting them from government propaganda.
