Laid-Off Workers in a Workers State Unemployment with Chinese Characteristics [Hardcover]

In this book, an international team of scholars explores not only the politics of xiagang, but also the effect on Chinese workers and their families, and the variety of their responses to this unprecedented dislocation in their lives.PART I: RESTRUCTURING THE ECONOMIC ORDER Introduction: Xiagang: Laid-Off Workers in a Workers' State; W.J.Hurst , T.B.Gold ,?& J.Won Broadening the Debate on Xiagang: Peasant Workers and Xiagang in History; L.Guang PART II: XIAGANG WORKERS Voices of Xiagang: Naming, Blaming, and Framing; E.P.W.Hung ?& S.W.K.Chiu The Sound of Silence: Politics of Unemployment in Northeast China; J.Won The Professional Reinteration of the 'Xiagang'; L.Peilin ?& Z.Yi PART III: THE POLITICS OF XIAGANG Government Policies and Chinese Laid-Off Workers; Y.Cai Xiagang and the Geometry of Urban Poitical Patronage in China: Celebrated State (once-) Workers and State Chagrin; D.J.Solinger Class Formation or Fragmentation? Allegiances and Divisions among Managers and Workers in State-Owned Enterprises; K.Lin The Power of the Past: Nostalgia and Popular Discontent in Contemporary China; W.J.Hurst The Reemergence of Street Protests: State Workers Challenge the Chinese State; A.Kernen

The chapters in this book collectively address a critical juncture in the history of Chinese labor: the mass unemployment that followed the restructuring of state enterprises in the 1990s. Readers will find rich descriptions of the identities and worldviews of those who were once the socialist masters of the Chinese factory, as well as careful explanations of the political demands and policy responses that came with their sudden loss of material and social status. - Mark W. Frazier, ConocoPhillips Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Oklahoma

Fourteen China experts examine the fate of the thirty million state workers who have been laid off, in the most comprehensive study to date. The relationships between the state and laid-off workers lÓÓ