Globalisation and China ꟷ An Empirical Review of Chinese Labour Development in the 21st Century

The Chinese economy begins to integrate into the globalization since the early 1980s and accelerates the process after the accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. The increasing integration of China into the globalization through trade and investment, particularly the recent years' rapid increasing outward Chinese Foreign Direct Investment to the rest of the world, may lead to different scenarios for domestic Chinese labor conditions. Globalization may lead to higher domestic labour conditions following the "California Effect"; or it can further strengthen the Communism Party of China (CPC)'s own ideology on labour issues in competing with the Western norms. This paper aims to exam China's domestic labour situation since the 21st Century through an empirical approach to address which scenario best explains the labour evolution China. Results from the three categories of labour issues show a complexity of the connections between the China's integration into the globalization and domestic labour conditions. While there are improvements on the working conditions part, the political aspects of labour issues are more difficult to interpret. The trade and outward Chinese FDI on the one hand leads to an expansion of the official trade union network in China, however such expansion is not supported by the workforce. Further breakdown analysis that focusing on the coastal provinces confirms the above finding. Overall, the impact of China’s participation into the globalization on domestic labour situation is a mixed picture, with some improvements and convergence to the world, and also with some components more divergent and full of the “Chinese Characteristics”.