ABSTRACT
The idea remains widespread among commentators that industrial reform has hardly penetrated the labor process in China’s state owned factories. The three mills are referred as City Cotton, County Cotton and Metro Cotton. The workforces of these three mills are composed primarily of state contract and peasant contract workers. The full-load work method is an import from Japan. It was developed by the director of Shijiazhuang Number One Plastic Works after a visit to Japan in the early 1980s. Production quotas are commonly changed to increase the intensity of labor. Evidence provided by workers as well as management and union leaders consistently leads to the conclusion that a speed-up of machinery has been widespread. As a method to achieve higher labor productivity, labor emulation can be traced back to its birthplace in the former Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Labor emulation has undergone radical reforms in order to serve the newly structured enterprise goals.
