Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Chinese working-class politics experienced a drastic shift around 1927. Prior to 1927, the warlords' incapacitation in labor policy and indiscriminate and arbitrary suppression brought conflictual state-labor relationss into existence, and working class politics turned out to be radical. After 1927, the new authoritarian regime adopted a dramatically different labor policy in dealing with the labor movements since it had taken control of most of China. Unlike the warlords' regime, the leadership of new regime proclaimed their ideology based on Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, promulgated and amended the Labor Laws, established the local mediating agencies to enforce the laws, and selectively suppressed pro-communist labor unrest. In this way, the new regime gave the rise to consensual state-labor relations, which de-radicalized working class politics, and more specifically, workers obtained a lot of ecnomic benefits from their collective actions.