Industrial Relations in China

T HE MAJOR CHANGES in China since Hua Kuo-feng came to power in October I976 have focussed on rapid economic development. The purpose of this paper is to look at one aspect of those changes, namely industrial relations policies. The announcements of new policies, in this field as in others, have included attacks on the so-called of Four and have presented the conflict as another instance of the recurring two-line struggle. Therefore we are concerned not only with the present line but also with how it differs from the line advocated by the Gang of Four. Andrew Watson has warned that the tendency of both the Chinese themselves and Western commentators to accept an analytical framework of two-line struggle has obscured the degree to which resource availability has influenced actual policies, and he suggests that the realities of industrial relations have not changed as much over the years as that term would indicate.' While the differences between the rhetorical pronouncements of contending groups have been exacerbated by efforts to castigate one's opponents as totally one-sided, similarities in practice have derived from the fact that the two lines have overlapped in terms of formal characteristics, both claiming inspiration from Mao's Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Corporation. To confuse the issue further, the period before October I976 was one of particularly acute disparity between policies advocated in the media, which was largely controlled by the Gang of Four, and prevailing realities. It was also a period of conflict, so that practice differed greatly from region to region and even factory to factory, depending on who was in control, while by 1976 direct confrontation had disrupted production altogether in some areas. At the same time, the policy proposals articulated before and after

China · Line (geometry) · Political science · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Industrial relations · Law · Mathematics

• On the `Two Roads' and Following our Own Path

  Louis T Sigel•The Australian Journal of Chinese…•1982

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