Contemporary Industrial Relations of China

Date: Thursday, 4 June

Venue: AM 101, Alan MacDiarmid Building, Kelburn Campus

Speakers: Professor ZHAO Zuping

Abstract

Since the late 1970s China has transitioned toward a market economy with important implications for Chinese industrial relations. We can divide the period from 1979 to 2015 into three transitional stages, each with its own distinct features. Each stage has affected industrial relations profoundly. This seminar will discuss changes in Chinese industrial relations during these transitional periods. It will demonstrate how in recent years a labour regulation framework has been established and adapted to the market economic system and how the enforcement of contemporary labour laws often remain elastic in practice.

About the speaker

ZHAO Zuping is Professor of China Institute of Industrial Relations (Beijing, China), which is affiliated to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. ZHAO’s research focuses on Chinese politics (Government, political parties and the labor unions), migrant workers and social movements, social dialogue and the tripartite mechanism, migrant workers and villagers' committee elections and worker’s political participation in China. ZHAO is author of Labor Policy (ed.) (Shanghai: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, 2014) and Political Participation in the Anti-Japanese War Period (Beijing: China Workers Press, 2011).