ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses China's labour policy development amidst its market transition. Particularly, it examines labour law changes and policies for migrant workers. China's market-oriented reform has not only changed labour policies for workers of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and laid-off millions of workers, it also created a repressive labour policy regime for the new working class in China, who are rural-urban migrant workers. With the enactment of the Labour Law in 1994, the first labour code in China, China's labour legal framework has begun to develop. The emergence of migrant workers was parallel to China's economic reform process. Since the turn of the new century, China's labour policy regime has been reshaping itself due to labour shortages, the global financial crisis and increasing industrial conflicts. China's labour policy under its planned economy was urban biased, it focused on protecting urban residents. The existing labour policy regime seems unable to respond to the demands of migrant workers.
