The Habitus and "Logic of Practice" of China's Trade Unionists

Issues and Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 75-103

  Lau, Raymond W K ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

China; Habitus; Labor; Pierre Bourdieu; Trade union

Indexed keywords

EID: 0344628498     PISSN: 10132511     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (79)

1. South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), August 10, 2002.
2. Ibid., January 8, 2003.
3. Ibid., January 10, 2003.
4. In China, unofficial unions are forbidden. Unions are established at the grass-roots level in work establishments. These come under the territorial (not industrial) union organ. The national organ of the territorial structure is called the All-China Federation of trade Unions. For convenience, its acronym "ACFTU" will be used here also to refer to official unions overall according to the context.
5. In the Bolshevik union controversy in 1920, Lenin argued that the union played and should play a double role: to engage in production propaganda and ensure labor discipline for the state (the production function), and to defend workers' interests even against the employer-state (the protection function).
6. For instance, O'Leary has stated that "the frequently contradictory demands of these roles ... have been responsible for most of the major difficulties the ACFTU has experienced." See Greg O'Leary, "The Contemporary Role of Chinese Trade Unions," in Contemporary Developments in Asian Industrial Relations, ed. Sukhan Jackson (Sydney: Industrial Relations Research Centre, University of New South Wales, 1994), 30.
7. Merton Don Fletcher, Workers and Commissars: Trade Union Policy in the People's Republic of China (Western Washington State College Program in East Asian Studies Occasional Paper no. 6); and Lai To Lee, Trade Unions in China: 1949 to the Present (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1986).
8. Merton Don Fletcher, Workers and Commissars: Trade Union Policy in the People's Republic of China (Western Washington State College Program in East Asian Studies Occasional Paper no. 6); and Lai To Lee, Trade Unions in China: 1949 to the Present (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1986).
9. Anita Chan, "Revolution or Corporatism? Workers and Trade Unions in Post-Mao China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 29 (January 1993): 31-61; Gordon White, "Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism: Towards Corporatism or Civil Society?" British Journal of Industrial Relations 34, no. 3 (1996): 433-57; and Jude Howell, "Looking Beyond Incorporation: Chinese Trade Unions in the Reform Era," Mondes en Developpement, Tome 25-99 (1997): 73-90. Chan's article is the trend-setting paper, since which the ACFTU's "shift towards prioritizing the interests of workers" has become received wisdom. See Jude Howell, "Trade Unions in China: The Challenge of Foreign Capital," in Adjusting to Capitalism: Chinese Workers and the State, ed. Greg O'Leary (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 157.
10. Anita Chan, "Revolution or Corporatism? Workers and Trade Unions in Post-Mao China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 29 (January 1993): 31-61; Gordon White, "Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism: Towards Corporatism or Civil Society?" British Journal of Industrial Relations 34, no. 3 (1996): 433-57; and Jude Howell, "Looking Beyond Incorporation: Chinese Trade Unions in the Reform Era," Mondes en Developpement, Tome 25-99 (1997): 73-90. Chan's article is the trend-setting paper, since which the ACFTU's "shift towards prioritizing the interests of workers" has become received wisdom. See Jude Howell, "Trade Unions in China: The Challenge of Foreign Capital," in Adjusting to Capitalism: Chinese Workers and the State, ed. Greg O'Leary (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 157.
11. Anita Chan, "Revolution or Corporatism? Workers and Trade Unions in Post-Mao China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 29 (January 1993): 31-61; Gordon White, "Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism: Towards Corporatism or Civil Society?" British Journal of Industrial Relations 34, no. 3 (1996): 433-57; and Jude Howell, "Looking Beyond Incorporation: Chinese Trade Unions in the Reform Era," Mondes en Developpement, Tome 25-99 (1997): 73-90. Chan's article is the trend-setting paper, since which the ACFTU's "shift towards prioritizing the interests of workers" has become received wisdom. See Jude Howell, "Trade Unions in China: The Challenge of Foreign Capital," in Adjusting to Capitalism: Chinese Workers and the State, ed. Greg O'Leary (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 157.
12. Anita Chan, "Revolution or Corporatism? Workers and Trade Unions in Post-Mao China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 29 (January 1993): 31-61; Gordon White, "Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism: Towards Corporatism or Civil Society?" British Journal of Industrial Relations 34, no. 3 (1996): 433-57; and Jude Howell, "Looking Beyond Incorporation: Chinese Trade Unions in the Reform Era," Mondes en Developpement, Tome 25-99 (1997): 73-90. Chan's article is the trend-setting paper, since which the ACFTU's "shift towards prioritizing the interests of workers" has become received wisdom. See Jude Howell, "Trade Unions in China: The Challenge of Foreign Capital," in Adjusting to Capitalism: Chinese Workers and the State, ed. Greg O'Leary (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 157.
13. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990 [1980]).
14. The term "habitus" is subject to different interpretations. This paper follows the one in Raymond W.K. Lau, "Habitus and the Practical Logic of Practice: An Interpretation," Sociology (forthcoming in 2004).
15. I b i d.
16. The term "see" is in quotes because habitus is basically non-reflective.
17. Given that habitus is a dispositional sense, it would be ideal if ethnographic observation could have been used in addition to in-depth interviewing. However, for obvious reasons, that was hardly possible in studying China's unionists. Nonetheless, as the subsequent analysis will show, habitus does become discernible in in-depth interviewing.
18. Huai Yan, "Understanding the Political System of Contemporary China," Papers of the Center for Modern China 10 (August 1991).
19. The union exists in all public work establishments (known as work units or danwei) including public (state and collective) enterprises and state-funded institutions. We focus on state enterprises for simplicity.
20. John Burns, ed., The Chinese Nomenklatura System: A Documentary Study of Party Control of Leadership Selection 1979-1984 (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1989).
21. Author's interviews.
22. Zhao Bo, Zhongguo gongchandang zhangcheng cidian (A dictionary of the CCP constitution) (Beijing: Hongqi chubanshe, 1991); and Carol Lee Hamrin, "The Party Leadership System," in Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision-Making in Post-Mao China, ed. Kenneth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 4.
23. Zhao Bo, Zhongguo gongchandang zhangcheng cidian (A dictionary of the CCP constitution) (Beijing: Hongqi chubanshe, 1991); and Carol Lee Hamrin, "The Party Leadership System," in Bureaucracy, Politics, and Decision-Making in Post-Mao China, ed. Kenneth Lieberthal and David M. Lampton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 4.
24. Pen Hsiao, "Separating the Party from the Government," in Decision-Making in Deng's China: Perspectives from Insiders, ed. Carol Lee Hamrin and Suisheng Zhao (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), chap. 13.
25. Author's interviews.
26. Author's interviews.
27. Raymond W.K. Lau, "Socio-Political Control in Urban China: Crisis and Changes," British Journal of Sociology 52, no. 4 (December 2001): 605-20.
28. The following analysis of the purges of Li and his successor is based on Fletcher, Workers and Commissars; June M. Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" Journal of Industrial Relations 19, no. 2 (1977): 158-72; Lee, Trade Unions in China; Kevin Jiang, "The Conflicts Between Trade Unions and the Party-State: The Reform of Chinese Trade Unions in the Eighties," Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences, no. 8 (1996): 121-58; and the author's general knowledge of Li's career, unless indicated otherwise. Li's case bears close scrutiny because while the "corporatist" view makes much of his purge, it has never analyzed what Li's alleged errors actually referred to, but instead takes them at their face value within the Bolshevik lexicon.
29. The following analysis of the purges of Li and his successor is based on Fletcher, Workers and Commissars; June M. Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" Journal of Industrial Relations 19, no. 2 (1977): 158-72; Lee, Trade Unions in China; Kevin Jiang, "The Conflicts Between Trade Unions and the Party-State: The Reform of Chinese Trade Unions in the Eighties," Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences, no. 8 (1996): 121-58; and the author's general knowledge of Li's career, unless indicated otherwise. Li's case bears close scrutiny because while the "corporatist" view makes much of his purge, it has never analyzed what Li's alleged errors actually referred to, but instead takes them at their face value within the Bolshevik lexicon.
30. The following analysis of the purges of Li and his successor is based on Fletcher, Workers and Commissars; June M. Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" Journal of Industrial Relations 19, no. 2 (1977): 158-72; Lee, Trade Unions in China; Kevin Jiang, "The Conflicts Between Trade Unions and the Party-State: The Reform of Chinese Trade Unions in the Eighties," Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences, no. 8 (1996): 121-58; and the author's general knowledge of Li's career, unless indicated otherwise. Li's case bears close scrutiny because while the "corporatist" view makes much of his purge, it has never analyzed what Li's alleged errors actually referred to, but instead takes them at their face value within the Bolshevik lexicon.
31. The following analysis of the purges of Li and his successor is based on Fletcher, Workers and Commissars; June M. Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" Journal of Industrial Relations 19, no. 2 (1977): 158-72; Lee, Trade Unions in China; Kevin Jiang, "The Conflicts Between Trade Unions and the Party-State: The Reform of Chinese Trade Unions in the Eighties," Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences, no. 8 (1996): 121-58; and the author's general knowledge of Li's career, unless indicated otherwise. Li's case bears close scrutiny because while the "corporatist" view makes much of his purge, it has never analyzed what Li's alleged errors actually referred to, but instead takes them at their face value within the Bolshevik lexicon.
32. Elizabeth Perry, "Shanghai's Strike Wave of 1957," The China Quarterly, no. 137 (1994): 1-27.
33. See Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" 161; Lee, Trade Unions in China, 82; and the post-purge editorial of the ACFTU organ Gongren ribao (Workers' Daily) on July 1, 1958, cited in Fletcher, Workers and Commissars, 58. In section two, the difference between the Party's institutional and operational control over the union is explained.
34. See Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" 161; Lee, Trade Unions in China, 82; and the post-purge editorial of the ACFTU organ Gongren ribao (Workers' Daily) on July 1, 1958, cited in Fletcher, Workers and Commissars, 58. In section two, the difference between the Party's institutional and operational control over the union is explained.
35. See Hearn, "Whither the Trade Unions in China?" 161; Lee, Trade Unions in China, 82; and the post-purge editorial of the ACFTU organ Gongren ribao (Workers' Daily) on July 1, 1958, cited in Fletcher, Workers and Commissars, 58. In section two, the difference between the Party's institutional and operational control over the union is explained.
36. Cited in Fletcher, Workers and Commissars, 64.
37. Jeanne L. Wilson, "Labor Policy in China: Reform and Retrogression," Problems of Communism 39, no. 5 (1990): 44-65.
38. Jiang, "The Conflicts Between Trade Unions and the Party-State," 126.
39. Li Xiannian, "Address to the 10th Congress of the ACFTU," Gongren ribao, October 19, 1983.
40. Ni Zhifu, "Work Report to the 10th Congress of the ACFTU," ibid., October 27, 1983.
41. Jiang, "The Conflicts Between Trade Unions and the Party-State," 130.
42. All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), "Gonghui gaige de jiben shexiang" (Basic designs for the reform of the union) (1988), in Zhongguo gonghui zhongyao wenjian xuanbian (Selected important documents of China's unions) (Beijing: Jixie gongye chubanshe, 1990), 99-110.
43. Raymond W.K. Lau, "The Role of the Working Class in the 1989 Mass Movement in Beijing," Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 12, no. 3 (September 1996): 343-73.
44. Wei Jianxing, "Speech at the 2nd Plenum of the 12th Executive Committee of the ACFTU," Gongren ribao, December 13, 1994.
45. Gonghui lilun yu shijian (Union: Theory and Practice), February 1996, 12-14; March 1996, 7-10.
46. Gonghui lilun yu shijian (Union: Theory and Practice), February 1996, 12-14; March 1996, 7-10.
47. All-China Federation of Trade Unions, State Economic and Trade Commission, and State Commission for Economic Restructuring, "Guanyu Guowuyuan queding de baijia xiandai qiye zhidu shidian zhong gonghui gongzuo he zhigong minzhu guanli de shishi yijian" (Implementation proposals concerning union work and employees' democratic management in the one hundred pilot modem enterprises selected by the State Council), Zhongguo gongyun (China Labor Movement), June 1996, 15-16; Gonghui lilun yu shijian, March 1996, 19; and ibid., April 1996, 33.
48. All-China Federation of Trade Unions, State Economic and Trade Commission, and State Commission for Economic Restructuring, "Guanyu Guowuyuan queding de baijia xiandai qiye zhidu shidian zhong gonghui gongzuo he zhigong minzhu guanli de shishi yijian" (Implementation proposals concerning union work and employees' democratic management in the one hundred pilot modem enterprises selected by the State Council), Zhongguo gongyun (China Labor Movement), June 1996, 15-16; Gonghui lilun yu shijian, March 1996, 19; and ibid., April 1996, 33.
49. All-China Federation of Trade Unions, State Economic and Trade Commission, and State Commission for Economic Restructuring, "Guanyu Guowuyuan queding de baijia xiandai qiye zhidu shidian zhong gonghui gongzuo he zhigong minzhu guanli de shishi yijian" (Implementation proposals concerning union work and employees' democratic management in the one hundred pilot modem enterprises selected by the State Council), Zhongguo gongyun (China Labor Movement), June 1996, 15-16; Gonghui lilun yu shijian, March 1996, 19; and ibid., April 1996, 33.
50. Author's interviews.
51. Zhongguo gongyun, June 1996, 40; December 1996, 39; and April 1997, 39.
52. Zhongguo gongyun, June 1996, 40; December 1996, 39; and April 1997, 39.
53. Zhongguo gongyun, June 1996, 40; December 1996, 39; and April 1997, 39.
54. Author's interviews.
55. Renmin ribao (People's Daily), October 19 to October 26, 1998.
56. It might be thought that since the Party has never really represented workers, such nominal change does not mean much. Such a view is mistaken, however. In CCP practice, such "nominal" change signifies the Party's formal acceptance of an already obtaining state of affairs, which has great substantive consequences: in this case, it means entrepreneurs' and management's encroachments on the union's interests will be further tolerated by the Party.
57. See note 10 above.
58. The term "managerial" refers to the regime's goal (now partially abandoned) of establishing a managed society and economy.
59. It should be noted that the above logic of exposition is the reverse of the logic of discovery. That is to say, the discernment came first; it was only then that I enquired into the formative conditions of the unionists' self-definition-identification, which are explained in the previous paragraph in the text.
60. The government is represented by the labor department and is now known as labor and social security departments.
61. As part of the "we," it can be added.
62. Hence, the second belief-premise shades from dispositional to normative commitment. It should be noted that the dispositional and the normative are conceptually opposed categories, but in practice they need not be mutually exclusive. For instance, the adoption of the normative (e.g., goals) can be matter-of-fact, while what was once consciously normative in the Parsonian sense may also in time become dispositional.
63. Guangdong's provincial union cited in Zhongguo gongyun, November 1995, 4; and author's interviews.
64. Nanfang gongbao (Southern Labor), September 12, 1996, cited in Ching Kwan Lee, "From Organized Dependence to Disorganized Despotism: Changing Labour Regimes in Chinese Factories," The China Quarterly, no. 157 (1999): 58.
65. Nanfang gongbao (Southern Labor), September 12, 1996, cited in Ching Kwan Lee, "From Organized Dependence to Disorganized Despotism: Changing Labour Regimes in Chinese Factories," The China Quarterly, no. 157 (1999): 58.
66. See note 30 above.
67. Zhongguo gaige (China Reform), March 1996, 36-37; and author's interviews.
68. Without going into details, let it be noted that these are straightforward material interests. Bourdieu's concept of "game"- and "field"-specific illusio is inapplicable here.
69. There are two dimensions to this view - namely, that the ACFTU has developed, or is developing, into a "corporatist" organization, and that as such it is taking, or is developing the tendency to take, an "adversarial" position towards the party-state in shifting towards the protection end of the production-protection continuum. Hence, I shall hereinafter refer to this view as the "corporatist-adversarial" view.
70. Past indigenous rural elites sponsored various village welfare activities and provisions.
71. As far as I am aware, reference to the union as the "employees' family" has never even been mentioned in previous literature on the union.
72. Chan, "Revolution or Corporatism?" 31-61. This was a straightforward borrowing of the framework that Pravda and Ruble adopted to analyze East European unions in the early 1980s. See Alex Pravda and Blair A. Ruble, "Communist Trade Unions: Varieties of Dualism," in Trade Unions in Communist States, ed. Alex Pravda and Blair A. Ruble (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 1-21. The validity of Pravda and Ruble's analysis itself is of no concern to the present paper.
73. Chan, "Revolution or Corporatism?" 31-61. This was a straightforward borrowing of the framework that Pravda and Ruble adopted to analyze East European unions in the early 1980s. See Alex Pravda and Blair A. Ruble, "Communist Trade Unions: Varieties of Dualism," in Trade Unions in Communist States, ed. Alex Pravda and Blair A. Ruble (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 1-21. The validity of Pravda and Ruble's analysis itself is of no concern to the present paper.
74. These apparent paradoxes are of the nature of Kuhnian anomalies. In a paper with more substantial fieldwork backing than the article which founded the "corporatist-adversarial" view, Anita Chan came across the anomaly of "doubling up." Failing to resolve it, she finds it "contradictory" and "surprising." See Anita Chan, "Labor Relations in Foreign-Funded Ventures, Chinese Trade Unions, and the Prospects of Collective Bargaining," in O'Leary, Adjusting to Capitalism, 136, 140.
75. Howell, "Looking Beyond Incorporation," 73-90; and Howell, "Trade Unions in China" (cited in note 8 above). Howell's employment of the term "incorporation" is interesting, for it implies that the union at least originally existed as a quasi-independent entity from the Party (as required by the "dualist" model which Howell adopts) before it became "integrated into the party-state" in a process of "incorporation," which as shown is not the case.
76. Howell, "Looking Beyond Incorporation," 73-90; and Howell, "Trade Unions in China" (cited in note 8 above). Howell's employment of the term "incorporation" is interesting, for it implies that the union at least originally existed as a quasi-independent entity from the Party (as required by the "dualist" model which Howell adopts) before it became "integrated into the party-state" in a process of "incorporation," which as shown is not the case.
77. Sek Hong Ng and Malcolm Warner, China's Trade Unions and Management (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 1998), 6, 165. The same applies to White, "Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism," 445, 452.
78. Sek Hong Ng and Malcolm Warner, China's Trade Unions and Management (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 1998), 6, 165. The same applies to White, "Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism," 445, 452.
79. See note 22 above.