PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY The Political Economy of Reforms and the Remaking of the Proletarian Class in China, 1980s–2010s Demystifying China’s Society and Social Classes in the Post-Mao Era Shan Shanne Huang Palgrave Studies in Economic History Series Editor Kent Deng, London School of Economics, London, UK Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and enrich our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the past. The series covers a vast range of topics including financial history, labour history, development economics, commercialisation, urbanisation, indus- trialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in world economic orders. Shan Shanne Huang The Political Economy of Reforms and the Remaking of the Proletarian Class in China, 1980s–2010s Demystifying China’s Society and Social Classes in the Post-Mao Era Shan Shanne Huang United Nations Development Programme New York, NY, USA ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Economic History ISBN 978-3-031-20454-8 ISBN 978-3-031-20455-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20455-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: @ dowell/gettyimages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Dedicated to my grandfather- Li Qidong 李启东 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my parents who have been consistently supporting me throughout my research and writing. I missed many major events with family. Thanks to their tolerance and love. I would like to thank Professor Kent Deng’s kind invitation on publishing this book. Many thanks to my three referees, Dr. Jeff Hass, Professor Shouhui Zhao and Professor Jinghan Zeng, for their recogni- tion of my research and their valuable support for this book’s proposal and comments on the draft. The same thanks also go to my Ph.D. supervisors, Professor Kerry Brown and Dr. Jan Knoerich. This book’s manuscript is based on my Ph.D. dissertation. Thanks for their guidance during my Ph.D. research. I also want to thank all the respondents of this research for sharing with me their history, life and work experiences, and to help and support me during the fieldwork research. This empirical study relies on their histories and memories to analyse the changes and differences of this specific state- owned enterprise before and after the Reform and Opening Up, and to tease out their varying sense of status. I was born in Sichuan Province. In order to get higher education, I moved to Beijing and then relocated to Bristol and London. This book is for my hometown, my family and me. Almost a decade of living abroad let me have a deeply emotional connection with where I grew up and the vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS people there. Wherever I will be in the future, this book will remind me of where I come from and who I am. New York, USA Shan Shanne Huang September 2022 Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Research Background 3 1.2 The Working Class in China 12 1.3 Research Question 26 References 28 2 Theories and Methodology Applied 39 2.1 Theories 39 2.2 Methodology 58 References 70 3 The Case of E Group Corporation—an SOE in Sichuan, Post-1949 79 3.1 Sichuan: Artificial Establishment of SOEs in a Farming Province 79 3.2 E Group Company: Privileged SOE–cum–Financial Burden 86 3.3 E Group Company Workers 96 3.4 Summary on E Group Company 104 References 106 4 Workers’ Returning to a Proletariat Position in Post-1978 111 4.1 Research into SOEs Before Economic Reforms 111 4.2 Iron Rice Bowl and Workers’ Privilege Under the Work Unit System 115 ix x CONTENTS 4.3 Research into SOEs and Economic Reforms 123 4.4 Workers’ Status in E Group Company After SOE Reforms 133 4.5 Changes in the Composition of the Working Class in EGC 144 References 153 5 “Nostalgia” and “Protests”: Class Consciousness and Class-For-Itself 161 5.1 Nostalgia: The Socio-Political Condition of Working-Class Protest 163 5.2 Explicit Protest: Labour Activism in EGC 168 5.3 Implicit Protests and Practices of “Relationship” 179 References 192 6 The Reconstruction of Classes and a Class Society in China 197 6.1 Relative Deprivation, Multiple Exploitation, and Class Consciousness 200 6.2 Analysis on Transformation of China’s Social Structure 202 6.3 Classes and the Perception of a Class Society 205 6.4 State Capitalism and the Working Class 218 References 224 7 Final Conclusions 231 References 235 Appendix A: The Summary of the Basic Information of Interviewees 237 Appendix B: List of Internal Documents (Chronological Order) 243 Appendix C: Interview Question Guide 247 Appendix D: Memos in NVivo 253 Appendix E: Annotations in NVivo 261 Appendix F: Photos Collected from Fieldwork Research 265 Index 267