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China's Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy
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Comments/Reviews
Description: This important book contains case studies with substantive analysis of Chinese workers in a variety of settings: state enterprises, urban collectives, township and village enterprises, domestic private enterprises, and foreign funded enterprises. The cases include urban workers, migrant workers from the countryside, and workers who are sent to work outside of China.
The analytical framework for these case studies lays out why labor rights violations have been occurring in China and highlights the context in which these violations operate and the extent to which these selected cases are not isolated incidents. Moreover, the dilemma of Chinese workers is put into international perspective: the context of the international labor market, the setting of competitive minimum wages in Asia, and the concern for Chinese workers' rights taken up by the International Labor Organization (ILO).
This book debunks the conventional wisdom that Chinese workers are thriving because the Chinese economy is booming. Indeed the wage structures of these enterprises of different ownership types contribute to widening income disparities in China. The book uncovers what exactly the overseas Chinese entrepreneurship (Taiwan and Hong Kong), means at the factory level. And it calls for a new approach to scrutinizing the phenomena of the so-called Chinese economic "miracle" and its repercussions on other economies and labor markets.
Selected Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Forced Labor and Violations of Shop Floor-Labor Standards
Case 1: Zhaojie Footwear Company: Mistreatment of Workers under Investigation--Overtime, Extra Shifts, and Arbitrary Physical Punishment--We Can't Take It Anymore
Case 2: Working Undercover in a Factory
Case 3: Blood and Tears of the Soul-The Story of a Group of Workers Going on Strike
Case 4: The Two Were Chased and Beaten to Death in the River
Case 5: Give Me Back My Eight-Hour Work-Day System, Cried Employees from "Three Capital" Enterprises
3. Corporal Punishment and Physical Assaults
Case 6a: Wails from Behind a High Wall
Case 6b: What is the Most Appropriate Way to Manage Mainland Chinese Workers?-A Headache Facing Taiwanese Investors That Needs to be Discussed
Case 7: Korean Woman Boss Forces 120 Workers to Kneel Down
Case 8: Why Do Female Migrant Workers Go on Strike?
Case 9: Enterprise "Internal Security Department" Sets Up a Kangaroo Court: Worker Beaten Until Crippled for Breaking Rules
Case 10: Motorcyclist Crashed into a Fence and Refused to Apologize; Village "Big Shot" Gathered the Troops to Battle Migrant Workers
4. Violations of Occupational Safety and Health
Case 11: Report on Foreign Shoe Factories that Endanger Women Workers with Hydrocarbon Poisons in Putian, Fujian
Case 12: A Price That Should Not Be Paid
Case 13a: Toyland Inferno: A Journey Through the Ruins
Case 13b: Four Years Later-A Letter From One of the Survivors
5. Violations of the Right to Work
Case 14: How Should We Evaluate This Kind of "Investment Capital" Through the Recruitment of Workers?-Report on How Yanzhou Department Store Hires Employees
Case 15: Not a Single One of the 1,100 Employees of Shenyang City's Harmony Company Escaped the Misfortune of a Mass Layoff--Without Discussions with the Board of Directors and Staff and Workers Representative
6. Violations of the Right to Organize and of Collective Action
Case 16: Power and the Law: Who Mistreats Whom?
Case 17a: Standing Up for Workers' Rights-An Act of Subversion? The Trial of Two Shenzhen Laborers
Case 17b: "Let History Be the Judge"-Li Wenming's Statement to the Court Case 17c: Li Dongming's Statement in Court in Defense of His Brother, Li Wenming Case 17d: "It All Depends on Us" 7. Indentured Labor Abroad
Case 18: Give Back My Dignity: An Investigative Report on the Case of M/V Arcadia -Chinese Seafarers "Leaking State Secrets"
Case 19a: Should We Pay the Administration Fee? Investigation in the Labor Administration Fee Lawsuit Against Fu Sumei in Sanming Sanyuan District Court
Case 19b: Statement of Sui Jianwei
Case 20: Women Workers Shed Tears on the Pacific Islands
8. Workers' Resistance
Case 21: Several Dozen Workers Besieged and Taiwanese Businessman Injured; The Victims' Painful Account
Case 22a: Open Letter to All the Staff and Workers at Factory 3501
Case 22b: Second Letter to the Staff and Workers at Factory 3501
Case 22c: News from Beijing Factory 3501
Case 23: The Migrant "Lawyer" Who Specializes in "Speaking Out" for Other Migrants
9. In Pursuit of Labor Rights
Comment(s): ""Professor Chan's dramatic report on the human calamity being visited on Chinese workers reveals the full meaning of globalization today. She tells her stories in convincing and riveting detail, shattering the widespread illusion that the introduction of corporate capitalism in China has been a net benefit to its ordinary citizens. Read it, and get angry."" -- Jeff Faux, President, Economic Policy Institute
"Far too little is known about the actual working conditions inside the factories producing for overseas markets, which are rapidly multiplying throughout China. Some of the best of the empirical research done thus far has been done by Anita Chan. In her new book, Dr. Chan goes beyond the data and attempts to translate into real human terms what it is like for Chinese workers to spend each day in a sweatshop. What is so vividly portrayed in the true stories Dr. Chan has collected is deeply disturbing, for it paints a world of extreme exploitation and little hope. For all of the believers in unbridled, free-market economic reform as the only path for China's economic salvation, this book is a must read." -- John Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO
"Anita Chan is one the world's foremost experts on Chinese employment relations. In recent years sha has made several research trips to the mainland to interview workers, managers, officials and journalists. She is also an avid reader of the Chinese press. In this volume she has collected stories reported in China about working conditions in Chinese enterprises to which she has added commentary where appropriate. As a result, the book offers us insight into the Chinese workplace that cannot be dismissed as biased or self-interested....This volume ought to be on the must read list of China watchers as well as those interested in corporate accountability, international human rights and Asian employment relations." -- Roy Adams, McMaster University
Review(s): It is an important topic and is dealt with in a refreshing and interesting fashion. ... a useful resource, and should be taken by libraries and read by not only academics and researchers in areas such as sociology, employment studies, human resource management and business, but also by those involved in public policy, government, trade unions and even managers. The Journal of Industrial Relations
Anita Chan has produced a startling and very valuable expose in her annotated, learned, and engaged compilation of twenty-three cases concerned with the treatment and sufferings of Chinese labor in the past decade. ... This book should be read by anyone with an interest or involvement in contemporary China. The Journal of Asian Studies
Anita Chan's commentary is extremely provocative. ... a powerful indictment of neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics. Pacific Affairs
This book is a mine of useful insights into the condition of labour in modern China. ... an important human document in its own right. Work, Employment and Society
... should be required reading so that we all remember that workplace safety does not only exist in the West. The structure of the book, the reproduction of rare investigative articles with contemporary updates and interpretation, freshens the information and increases its relevance. This is a valuable and well researched alternative view. Safety at Work
... this account serves as a sobering reminder of the price that is being paid for growth and the room there is for improvement. China Review
...an outstanding and, courageous document on the creation of a new Chinese working class China Perspectives
China's Workers under Assault is, in a word, elegant: elegant in concept, elegant in execution, and elegant in its somewhat surprising conclusion. The China Journal
Anita Chan has written a timely and important book. It presents significant documentation about what is going on in the shadows of the figures about Chinese economic growth growth, and in the daily life of millions of Chinese workers. The book should be a must on the reading lists of people concerned with human rights in general and workers' rights in particular. It also deserves to be read by a much broader public ANU Reporter
...a powerful testimonial to what is going on inside China's factories today. ... Anita Chan has written a timely and important book that deserves to be widely read by the lay public as well as students and scholars in the field. It presents a very important account of what is going on behind the Chinese economic success story, and what goes on in the daily life of millions of workers during the economic reforms. The books ought to be essential reading for all those concerned with human rights in general and workers' rights in particular. I recommend it highly. Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 16
...what most distinguishes hina's Workers Under Assualt is the close-up view that it offers of the lives and suffering of ordinary Chinese workers. Critical Asian Studies
...impressive and vivid examples of rights abuse...organized and analyzed...in such a way that it provides readers with insight into both the Chinese labor system as well as the political system. ...should be read by human rights activists as well as by researchers of labor relations in China. China Information Vol. 16 No. 1
    
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