A culture of violence: The labor subcontracting system and collective action by construction workers in post-socialist China

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 64, 2010, Pages 143-158

  Pun, Ngai ^a   Huilin, Lu ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COLLECTIVE ACTION; CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY; CULTURE; ECONOMIC HISTORY; EMPLOYMENT; LABOR RELATIONS; VIOLENCE;

CHINA;

EID: 77954809412     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/tcj.64.20749250     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. See Lisa Rofel, Other Modernities: Gender Yearnings in China after Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) ;
2. Yan Hairong, New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
3. See Lei Guang's significant study on the home renovation industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which is one of the few studies related to construction workers. Lei Guang, "The Market as Social Convention: Rural Migrants and the Making of China's Home Renovation Market", Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2005), pp. 391-411.
4. See also Shen Yuan, Shichang, jieji yu shehui (Market, Class and Society) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2007), pp. 216-69.
5. In China, the construction industry is defined as the sector that creates buildings and other structures. See Sunsheng Han and George Ofori, "Construction Industry in China's Regional Economy, 1990-1998", Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 19 (2001), pp. 189-205.
6. See the report on "Construction Workers Alienated", China Daily, 9 July 2007.
7. See Zhongguo jianzhu nianjian, 2008 (Statistics of China's Construction 2008) (Beijing: Guojia Tongji Chubanshe, 2009).
8. The four research sites in Beijing were identified in November 2007. Ethnographic study began in December 2007 and was conducted throughout 2008 and 2009. A study in a Hebei rural village was conducted in January 2009. The research team is composed of eight postgraduate students of the Sociology Department of Peking University.
9. Their work intensity, work hours and payment methods are exploitative, but the rates of pay for construction workers are not as bad as those for workers in the manufacturing or service sectors.
10. See the report on Xin Zhongguo jianzhu ye wushi nian (The Fifty Years of New China's Construction Industry), published by a study group formed by the Construction Ministry (Beijing: Zhongguo Sanxia Chubanshe, 2000), p. 3.
11. See Gail Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), pp. 52-53.
12. See Lynda Shaffer, "Mao Ze-dong and the October 1922 Changsha Construction Workers' Strike", Modern China, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1978), p. 381.
13. Ibid., p. 383.
14. See Youjie Lu and Paul W. Fox, "The Construction Industry in China: Its Image, Employment Prospects and Skill Requirements", Working Paper, International Labor Organization, Geneva, October 2001, p. 13.
15. See also Gail Hershatter's discussion of the use of the apprenticeship system in Tianjin in the early 20th century, in The Workers of Tianjin, pp. 101-04.
16. See Lynda Shaffer, "Mao Ze-dong and the October 1922 Changsha Construction Workers' Strike", pp. 387-95.
17. This force from the People's Liberation Army was to become the most significant pillar in the construction industry in the reform period.
18. See Xin Zhongguo jianzhu ye wushi nian, p. 6.
19. See Richard E. Mayo and Gong Liu, "Reform Agenda of Chinese Construction Industry", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 121, No. 1 (1995), pp. 80-85.
20. See also Lei Guang, "The Market as Social Convention", pp. 391-92.
21. In August 1995, the State Planning Commission, the Ministry of Power Industry and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued "The Circular on Granting Concession to Foreign Financed Capital Projects". The Construction Law was put into effect on 1 March 1998, covering a wide range of issues such as qualifications for entry into the construction industry, procurement and delivery of works, construction supervision, construction safety, construction quality, legal liability, market regulations and procedures in construction projects.
22. The number of peasant-workers in the industry is listed in a 2004 ACFTU report, "A Survey on the Situation of Construction Peasant-Workers". See http://finance.sina.com.cn/g/20041111/17381148918.shtml.
23. The China Construction Bank is the major bank providing credit to large-scale construction projects, but only a small proportion of large enterprises have access to its services. Debt is said to be " triangular" when it involves a chain of debtors. See Youjie Lu and Paul W. Fox, "The Construction Industry in China", pp. 13-15.
24. Villas are more complicated to construct than a high-rise building, so the subcontractors have to set aside more labor days for the completion of the work.
25. The 1995 Labor Law was supposed to lay a foundation for workers' legal and contractual rights and a system for resolving labor disputes. In the 2000s, the Beijing leadership began to channel labor disputes into arbitration committees and the court system through bureaucratic and legal procedures. The Labor Contract Law, which went into effect on 1 January 2008, is considered the most significant change in the Chinese labor law in the reform period.
26. Women are paid 5 to 10 yuan less each day than their male counterparts on the same job. Pay rates reached a peak in 2007 and 2008, due to the shortage of labor evident from the early to the mid-2000s. In 2006, the daily pay rates for cement pourers and carpenters were 30 yuan and 50 yuan respectively; they soared to 50 yuan and 100 yuan in 2008.
27. In the construction industry, workers used gongqian to describe their wages, but workers in the manufacturing and service sectors usually used gongzi (salary), a more formal concept.
28. The situation is like that for coal miners, who are at risk of serious injury or fatality because of frequent explosions in the mining industry, but who work there principally because of the relatively high rate of pay.
29. Strictly speaking, according to the Company Law and the Construction Law, the laborsupplier subcontractors do not have corporate status, and hence do not have the legal status to employ workers.