The Master in Bondage: Factory Workers in China, 1949-2019

This book examines the participation of the working class in factory life during socialist and reform-era China, challenging existing interpretations and providing new insights into the nature of the Maoist state, power relations on the shop floor, and industrial enterprise reforms. It argues that Maoist-era state-owned enterprises effectively turned factory workers into a well-disciplined labor force, but enterprise reforms in the 1980s and 1990s undermined this equilibrium, leading to the transformation of the industrial workforce.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 330 pages
Publication date: 03 April 2023
Publisher: Stanford University Press

Drawing on a rich tapestry of original oral histories conducted with retired factory workers hailing from industrial hubs nationwide, this book presents a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of working-class participation in factory life during socialist and reform-era China. Huaiyin Li offers a series of novel interpretations that challenge, revise, and expand upon the existing scholarship on factory politics and worker performance during the Maoist years, encompassing the nature of the Maoist state as observed in the dynamics of power relations on the shop floor, as well as the origins and trajectories of industrial enterprise reforms in the post-Mao era.

In stark contrast to the ideologically motivated objective of fostering grassroots democracy or elevating workers' status as the rightful masters of the workplace, Li contends that Maoist-era state-owned enterprises operated effectively to transform factory workers into a well-disciplined labor force through a complex web of formal and informal institutions that served to establish a balance of power and work norms. The enterprise reforms of the 1980s and 1990s undermined this pre-existing equilibrium, catalyzing the transformation of the industrial workforce from predominantly privileged workers in state-owned enterprises to precarious migrant workers of rural origins who were hired by private firms. Ultimately, this comprehensive and richly textured history presents a analytically astute new portrayal of everyday factory life in the world's largest manufacturing powerhouse.

Weight: 514g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503635289