ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that attempts by organised labour to contest restructuring must be understood within the context of a new neoliberal passive revolution. By the late 1980s, the rise of labour in Korea and Taiwan had also undermined their existing niche in low-wage production and produced the same impetus toward neoliberal restructuring as had existed in the industrial heartlands of Western capitalism. The Taiwanese developmental state underwent a similar process of economic and political liberalisation as a result of both changes in domestic state-society relations. Economic liberalisation, and particularly privatisation, also opened up lucrative opportunities for Taiwanese capital in areas of the economy that had long been dominated by state-owned enterprises. The chapter argues that increased global competition and the spread of neoliberal ideology have led to a renewed passive revolution based on a strategy of trasformismo, whereby the upper echelons of the labour movement have been co-opted into the structures of liberal democracy.
