The Master in Bondage
Drawing on a rich set of original oral histories conducted with retired factory workers from industrial centers across the country, this book provides a bottom-up examination of working class participation in factory life during socialist and reform-era China. Huaiyin Li offers a series of new interpretations that challenge, revise, and enrich the existing scholarship on factory politics and worker performance during the Maoist years, including the nature of the Maoist state as seen in the operation of power relations on the shop floor, as well as the origins and dynamics of industrial enterprise reforms in the post-Mao era.
In sharp contrast with the ideologically driven goal of promoting grassroots democracy or manifesting workers' status as the masters of the workplace, Li argues that Maoist era state-owned enterprises operated effectively to turn factory workers into a well-disciplined labor force through a complex set of formal and informal institutions that functioned to generate an equilibrium in power relations and work norms. The enterprise reforms of the 1980s and 1990s undermined this preexisting equilibrium, catalyzing the transformation of the industrial workforce from predominantly privileged workers in state-owned enterprises to precarious migrant workers of rural origins hired by private firms. Ultimately, this comprehensive and textured history provides an analytically astute new picture of everyday factory life in the world's largest manufacturing powerhouse.
"Huaiyin Li presents a treasure trove of oral history which can never be collected again, and which goes way beyond the documentary record to add so much that is significant, new, and surprising to our picture of the Chinese working class at a crucial juncture in its re-formation."—Marc Blecher, Oberlin College
"By exploring the micro-level mechanisms that constrained and motivated the labor force in post-1949 China, Li seeks to reconstruct the realities of worker performance in production and in factory governance in this thoughtfully structured and thoroughly argued volume.... Highly recommended."—S. K. Ma, CHOICE
"[The Master in Bondage] serves as a compendium of important issues upon which scholars of labour and industrial relations history should continue to reflect in order to understand China's working class."—Bill Taylor, The China Quarterly
"The fine-grained data offers fresh insights to reinterpret Chinese workers' subjectivity and everyday work norms, as well as the changes in industrial power relations and social composition in the Mao era and reform period. In the face of stark class differences in status, wealth and power, Li's scholarship will inspire important discussions on creating the necessary conditions for workplace democracy and political equality in contemporary times."—Jenny Chan, Labor History
"This is a landmark study critical for everyone interested in the working class, and which should be of interest to all scholars and students of the politics and society of China."—Dorothy J. Solinger, Pacific Affairs
"The Master in Bondage is a sweeping and incisive contribution to our understanding of Chinese labor history and working-class formation. Whether one is a seasoned scholar, a graduate student, or an undergraduate, all will learn something new and telling from this work. The best scholarship forces us to rethink what we already believe to be true—The Master in Bondage does exactly this."—Calvin Chen, The China Journal
"The Master in the Bondage not only offers refreshing observations on the everyday labour relations in Maoist China, but also supplies a story from the recent past that encourages us rethink our contemporary world. Labour relations are globally undergoing dramatic transformation with the rise of digital technology and artificial intelligence, and Li's timely reassessment of the experiences of Chinese factory workers can shed light on the aforementioned challenges. As such, it is a must-read for those interested in contemporary labour, social, and economic history."—Mingran Cao, European Journal of East Asian Studies
"The most outstanding feature of [The Master in Bondage] is the author's skillful interweaving of the factory workers' vivid voices, distinct from previous scholarship that largely engages in institutional analysis or elite politics."—Seung Joon Lee, Journal of Asian Studies
