China & Labour Relations
The world’s largest workforce and the union that cannot say no to the employer
China presents the most consequential paradox in global labour relations: the world’s largest workforce, producing goods consumed everywhere on earth, with a union system constitutionally prohibited from genuinely representing workers against state or employer interests. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is the only legal union body, and it operates under Communist Party direction. Yet Chinese workers have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for spontaneous collective action — through wildcat strikes, work stoppages, and labour NGO activity — that reveals the gap between the official system and worker realities.
10 Things That Stand Out About Labour Relations in China
- The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), founded in 1925 and reconstituted after the Communist revolution, is the only legally permitted national trade union body in China. Independent unions are prohibited, and organizing outside the ACFTU framework can result in criminal prosecution for the organizers.
- China’s Labour Law of 1994 and Labour Contract Law of 2008 established comprehensive individual employment rights — written contracts, wage protections, limits on working hours, and severance entitlements — that represent a significant improvement in statutory standards. However, enforcement is inconsistent, and the absence of independent unions limits workers’ ability to assert these rights collectively.
- One of the most significant figures in Chinese labour history is Han Dongfang, a railway worker who co-founded the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — the first independent union attempt in communist China. Han was imprisoned, exiled to the United States for medical treatment, and barred from returning. He has since run China Labour Bulletin from Hong Kong, the most important independent monitoring organization for Chinese labour rights.
- China’s extraordinary economic growth from the 1980s onward was powered partly by a vast supply of rural migrant workers (mingong) moving to coastal manufacturing cities. These workers — estimated at 280–300 million — have been the backbone of Chinese manufacturing but have historically had fewer legal protections than urban residents under the hukou household registration system.
- Wildcat strikes — spontaneous work stoppages organized outside the ACFTU framework — have been a persistent feature of Chinese labour relations despite their legal ambiguity. The China Labour Bulletin’s strike map documented thousands of strikes annually throughout the 2010s, primarily in manufacturing, construction, and transportation.
- The 2010 Honda strike in Foshan, Guangdong, was a landmark event in Chinese labour history. Workers at a Honda parts factory struck for two weeks and won a 24% wage increase, with their demands coordinated through social media rather than official union channels. The strike demonstrated both the capacity of Chinese workers for collective action and the ACFTU’s inability to channel it.
- China’s minimum wage system, set by provincial governments, has been raised significantly and repeatedly since the early 2000s in response to labour shortages and government policy. These increases, driven by central direction rather than collective bargaining, have been the primary mechanism for raising wages in the Chinese manufacturing sector.
- Labour NGOs — civil society organizations providing legal advice, training, and advocacy for workers — emerged in the Pearl River Delta region in the 2000s and played a significant role supporting wildcat strikes and legal claims. Since 2015, a government crackdown has severely restricted their activities, with numerous NGO leaders prosecuted or detained.
- The shift of manufacturing investment from coastal China to inland provinces and to Southeast Asia, combined with demographic change, has reduced the abundant labour supply that characterized Chinese manufacturing for three decades. Tighter labour markets have given Chinese workers more informal bargaining power even as formal collective bargaining rights remain restricted.
- China’s labour relations are at a critical juncture: a government committed to increasing domestic consumption and ‘common prosperity’ objectives that require higher wages, a workforce that has demonstrated the capacity for collective action, and a political system that will not permit independent unionism. How China resolves this tension will have profound consequences for the global economy and for workers everywhere.
