2. Silver, Beverly J., Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge, 2003), 5Google Scholar.

3. Ibid.

4. Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, England, 1963/1980), 10–11Google Scholar.

5. For example, Foster, John, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Dawley, Alan, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, MA, 1976)Google Scholar; Calhoun, Craig. J., The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; Blewett, Mary H., Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780–1910 (Chicago, 1990)Google Scholar; Koo, Hagen, Korean Workers: The Culture and Politics of Class Formation (Ithaca, NY, 2001)Google Scholar.

6. Hobsbawm, Eric, Worlds of Labour: Further Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

7. Katznelson, Ira, “Working-Class Formation: Constructing Cases and Comparisons,” in Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, eds. Katznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide R. (Princeton, 1986), 11Google Scholar.

8. Katznelson, “Working-Class Formation”; see also Edwards, Paul K., “Late 20th Century Workplace Relations: Class Struggle Without Classes,” in Renewing Class Analysis, Crompton, Rosemary et al. , eds. (Oxford, 2000), 141–164Google Scholar.

9. Vogel, Ezra F., One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform (Cambridge, 1989), 2Google Scholar.

10. Lee, Ching Kwan, Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (Berkeley, 1998), 1Google Scholar.

11. Ibid.

12. In this article, the analysis of the strike cases before 2004 were based on documentary research. I considered—in addition to some media reports—several reports written by NGO labor researchers in Hong Kong. Interviews with the report authors were conducted to verify the reliability of the data. For the Uniden case in 2004, the data were collected through reviewing media reports, workers’ blogs, NGO reports, and interviews with NGO staff as well as workers in the factory. The technique of triangulation was used to analyze information from various sources. For the Foshan Honda case in 2010, colleague Elaine Hui and I conducted interviews with strikers during the strike and maintained contacts with strike leaders after the strike.

13. This and the next sections are partially drawn from Chan, Chris King-Chi, The Challenge of Labour in China (New York, 2010)Google Scholar; Chan, Chris King-Chi and Hui, Elaine Sio-Ieng, “The Dynamics and Dilemma of Workplace Trade Union Reform in China: The Case of the Honda Workers’ Strike,” Journal of Industrial Relations 54 (2012): 653–68Google Scholar; and Hui, Elaine Sio-Ieng and Chan, Chris King-Chi, “‘The Harmonious Society’ as a Hegemonic Project: Labour Conflicts and Changing Labour Policies in China,” Labour, Capital and Society 44 (2012): 156–83Google Scholar.

14. Wang, Shaoguang, “The Social and Political Implications of China's WTO Membership,” Journal of Contemporary China 9 (2000): 373–405Google Scholar, cited in Pun, Ngai, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (Durham, NC, 2005), 72Google Scholar.

15. One US dollar was equal to 6.3 yuan, according to the exchange rate in December 2012.

16. Yin, Yong Qin and Yang, Zheng Mu, Ju bian: 1978 nian—2004 nian zhongguo jingji gaige licheng [Great Transformation: The Process of Chinese Economic Reform 1978–2004] (Beijing, 2004), 80Google Scholar.

17. Cooke, Fang Lee, HRM, Work and Employment in China (London, 2005)Google Scholar.

18. Pun, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace.

19. Lee, Gender and the South China Miracle.

20. Chan, Anita, “Revolution or Corporatism? Workers and Trade Unions in Post-Mao China,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 29 (1993): 31–61Google Scholar.

21. Deng Xiao Ping, “Zai Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shanghai dengdi de tanhua yaodian.” [The main points of speeches in Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shanghai, etc.] (1992) Available at http://www.njmuseum.com/zh/book/cqgc_big5/dxpnxjh.htm (Accessed June 1, 2012.)

22. Trini Wing-yue Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994,” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Hong Kong, 1998), 162–63; Lee, Ching Kwan, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley, 2007)Google Scholar.

23. Lee, Gender and the South China Miracle, 68.

24. Cooke, HRM, Work and Employment in China, 1.

25. Xuan, Jiang, Woguo zhong changqi shiye wenti yanjiu [Research on Medium- and Long-term Unemployment Problems in China] (Beijing, 2004)Google Scholar.

26. Sheng, Bai Nan and Yuan, Song Hong et al. , Huixiang haishi jincheng? Zhongguo nongcun waichu laodongli huiliu yanjiu [Returning Home or Entering a City? Research on the Return of Rural Migrant Labour Force in China] (Beijing, 2002)Google Scholar.

27. World Bank, Data: Exports of goods and services (percent of GDP), available online: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS (Accessed December 12, 2012.)

28. The first document issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) each year is called the “yihao wenjian” [No. 1 Document], and this document usually refers to issues that are considered important by the CCP.

29. New China Net, February 1, 2010.

30. Southern Weekend, July 15, 2004.

31. Ibid., September 9, 2004.

32. National Bureau of Statistics of China, “6-3: Total Value of Imports and Exports” (years 1978–2009), http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2010/html/R0603e.htm (Accessed June 1, 2012.)

33. Hui and Chan, “‘The Harmonious Society’ as a Hegemonic Project.”

34. New China Net, January 21, 2010.

35. Global Times, January 20, 2011.

36. Chengdu Commercial Daily, February 22, 2010.

37. For example, Franzosi, Roberto, The Puzzle of Strikes: Class and State Strategies in Postwar Italy (Cambridge, 1995)Google Scholar.

38. Hui and Chan, “‘The Harmonious Society’ as a Hegemonic Project.”

39. This section is based on Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994.” Leung had been a labor organizer and researcher since the early 1980s in Hong Kong.

40. South China Morning Post, July 30, 1988, and Hong Kong Standard, July 30, 1988, cited from Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994,” 157–58.

41. A woman journalist, Luo Jianlin, who had worked and lived with workers in a factory in SKIZ, recorded this strike story in Special Economic Zone Literature Herald, February 1987. The newspaper was abolished for political reasons later in 1987, but the story was translated and documented by Leung (1988). Part of the information in this section was also cited from Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang [Condition of Workers’ Rights in the Pearl River Delta] (Hong Kong, 1995)Google Scholar. Asia Monitor Resource Centre is a labor rights campaign and research organization in Hong Kong.

42. Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang, 33.

43. Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994,” 162–63.

44. Kai, Chang, Laoquanlun: Dangdai zhongguo laodong guanxi de falu tiaozheng yanjiu [The Theory of Workers’ Rights: Research on the Legal Regulation of Labor Relations in Contemporary China] (Beijing, 2004)Google Scholar. The workers’ right to strike was abolished in the 1982 version of the Constitution. Laws did not make a strike illegal, but any action to disrupt social order was illegal under section 158 of the Penal Code.

45. Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994,” 163.

46. Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang, 33.

47. Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994,” 164.

48. Sheng, Xie Qing, “Guangzhou shi de waisheng mingong shequn–zhongguo minjian Shehui de zaixian,” [Crossed province migrant workers community: the reemergence of Chinese civil society] Chinese Social Science Quarterly (Hong Kong), 18–19 (1997): 197–202Google Scholar.

49. This is according to Labor Movement Monthly [Gongyun yuekan] 127 (1994); Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang; and the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC)'s newspaper cutting archives. Examples of media reports include Southern Workers Daily, January 3, 1994.

50. Kuaipao Daily, March 14, 1994.

51. Apart from scholars (e.g., Taylor, Bill, Chang, Kai, and Li, Qi, Industrial Relations in China [Cheltenham, 2003]Google Scholar), labor activists in Hong Kong who conducted fieldwork in Shenzhen and Zhuhai during this period also portrayed the strikes as “tidal waves” [bagong chao] to denote the wave-by-wave domino effect of the strikes. This section is based on a number of reports produced by several researchers linked to Asia Monitor Resource Centre. Interviews were conducted with the report authors in 2005 to crosscheck and clarify some of the information before this section was written. However, as the original documents are brief and the strikes had taken place almost two decades ago, some important information is missing.

52. Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China: 1989–1994,” 38.

53. Ibid., no page number.

54. Jiang, Kevin K. W., “Gonghui yu dang-guo chongtu: bashi niandai yulai de zhongguo gonghui gaige,” [Conflicts of trade unions and party-state: Chinese trade union reform since the 1980s] in Hong Kong Journal of Social Science 8 (1996): 139Google Scholar.

55. Taylor, Chang, and Li, Industrial Relations in China, 175. The first and second waves were both in the 1950s.

56. According to Guangdong Provincial Statistics Bureau, Guangdong tongji nianjian [Guangdong Statistical Yearbook] (Beijing, 1991)Google Scholar, cited in Liu, P. W. et al. , Zhongguo gaige kaifang yu zhujiang sanjiaozhou de jingji fazhan yanjiu baodao [A Study Report on Economic Development of the Pearl River Delta and China's Reform and Opening] (Hong Kong, 1992)Google Scholar, the average monthly salary was 359 yuan in Shenzhen, 304 yuan in Zhuhai, and 295 yuan in Guangzhou, the provincial capital city.

57. Leung, “The Politics of Labour Rebellions in China,” 79; according to Yang Fan, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the inflation rate in 1992 and 1993 was thirteen percent and rose to twenty percent in 1994, which had surpassed the high level of 1988 (18.9 percent) to reach a historical peak. Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang and Labor Movement Monthly [Gongyun yuekan]; the inflation rate in SEZs might have been even higher.

58. Labor Movement Monthly [Gongyun yuekan], 9; Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang, 32.

59. The strike cases in this period were recorded in three labor organization publications: Labor Movement Monthly [Gongyun yuekan]; Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang; and Shek, P. K. and Leung, T., “Export Processing Zones in China,” in We in the Zone: Women Workers in Asia's Export Processing Zones, ed. Asia Monitor Resource Centre (Hong Kong, 1998), 191–241Google Scholar. According to the authors and editors, they were based on newspaper reports and on-site visits to workers in preparation of the reports. I also referenced some news reports in Hong Kong newspapers in writing this section. Apart from Yongfeng, other reported cases about strikers who attempted to organize a trade union during a strike included a strike at Sanmei, a Japanese electronic factory in Zhuhai, in 1993.

60. An anonymous labor activist, based on his interviews with the workers in the strike in 1994, recorded this story in Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang, 37–38.

61. Asia Monitor Resource Centre, Zhujiang sanjiaozhou gongren quanyi zhuangkuang, 38.

62. Ibid.

63. For example, Jiang Xuan, Woguo zhong changqi shiye wenti yanjiu and Cooke, HRM, Work and Employment in China.

64. Lin, F., “What is the Future of the Employment Relationship in the Pearl River Delta—An Examination of The Current Reform of Employment Relations and Legislation,” in The Guang Dong Development Model and Its Challenges, ed. Cheng, J. Y. S. (Hong Kong, 1998), 211–50Google Scholar.

65. A more detailed version of the Uniden case was documented in Chapter 2 (Chan, The Challenge of Labour in China). Apart from the Uniden case, I also elaborated on two other cases of strikes in the period from 2004 to 2007, in which workers demanded to establish a trade union or to include rank-and-file representatives into the trade union committee (see Chapter 4 and 5, Chan 2010).

66. Ordinary workers did not have a company e-mail address. Also, the organizers did not want to alert the top management at this stage when they were consolidating support, so they did not send the letter to the managers. We can see that, similar to other strike cases in China [see Chapter 3–5, Chan, The Challenge of Labour in China], the midlevel technical and supervisory staff have always played a core role in organizing and sustaining a strike. This finding is also in line with many literatures on strikes and workers’ struggles in Western countries (e.g., Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class; Hobsbawm, Eric J., Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour [London, 1968]Google Scholar; Hyman, Richard, Strikes. [Basingtoke, 1973]Google Scholar).

67. The factory had promised to set up a trade union during a strike in 2000.

68. This is the author's translation from a workers’ blog. The blog has been removed from the Internet.

69. Again, the leading position of two well-educated staff in the technical departments confirmed findings in other strike cases in China (Chan, The Challenge of Labour in China) and many Western literatures. For example, Hobsbawm has suggested a concept of “labour aristocracy” referring to the skilled workers who led workers’ struggles in nineteenth-century England (Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour :272).

70. The harassment by police of strike leaders is common in China. This is also evidenced in the Honda strike in 2010 where the author conducted detailed fieldwork. During the strike, police ran into the home of two active workers and searched their computers. These two leaders started to keep a low profile in the second part of the strike because of this incident.

71. The author had conducted an interview with one of the two workers in May 2006.

72. For other cases of strikes that had similar characteristics to Uniden from 2004 to 2007, see elaboration in Chan The Challenge of Labour in China.

73. See Chan and Hui, “The Dynamics and Dilemma of Workplace Trade Union Reform in China” for a more detailed analysis of the Honda workers’ case. After the Honda strike, to reelect or reconstruct [gaizu] the workplace trade union committee became one of the important demands of workers in a number of strike cases in PRD, such as Japanese invested electronic factories, Citizen Watch factory, and Ohms Electronics (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd.

74. Takungpao Daily, June 1, 2010.

75. Interview with workers on May 30, 2010. Most of the workers whom I interviewed during the strike expressed discontent toward the enterprise trade union. This quotation is just one example to demonstrate their dissatisfaction. Another worker wrote and read out a letter criticizing the trade union during one of the meetings the company held with the strikers after the strike broke out.

76. The information was shared with me by the workers’ representative. The worker's blog was removed from the Internet after the strike.

77. Mingpao Daily, June 1, 2010.

78. It should be noted that it was the election of strike committee representatives, not trade union committee members.

79. Caixin Net, June 2, 2010. This is the translated version. The apology letter issued by the trade unions was first published by Caixin Net on June 2, 2010, at http://policy.caing.com/2010-06-02/100149369.html [accessed June 3, 2010], with the title, “An open letter from the Nanhai district trade unions and Sishan county trade unions to CHAM workers.” However, this was later removed from the website, probably due to government censorship. In this open letter, the trade unions did not explicitly mention what “a number of things that workers find hard to accept” were; but given the development of the strike and the motivation of issuing this letter, these “things” should refer to the trade unionists’ persuading workers to return to work and the physical confrontation between trade unionists and strikers. This letter did not spell out these things on purpose because the trade unions wanted to play down the incident.

80. This letter had been widely circulated during the strike by the Internet news source, Caixin Net, and a number of independent websites, including Chinese Workers Research Network that will be discussed below.

81. For a further elaboration, see Chan, Chris King-Chi, “Class or citizenship? Debating workplace conflict in China,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 42:2 (2012): 308–327Google Scholar.

82. The minimum monthly wage at the time was 920 yuan. The pay increase was a result of a negotiation process that started in the afternoon and ended at midnight. For details of this negotiation and its development, see Chan, Chris King-chi and Hui, Elaine Sio-Ieng, “The Development of Collective Bargaining in China: From ‘Collective Bargaining by Riot’ to ‘Party State-led Wage Bargaining.” The China Quarterly (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

83. For the process of the trade union election, see Chan and Hui, “The Dynamics and Dilemma of Workplace Trade Union Reform in China.”

84. Southern Metropolitan Daily, March 13, 2011.

85. Takungpao Daily, June 14, 2010.

86. Interview with a labor law expert at the University of Shenzhen and an advisor to SFTU, Shenzhen, July, 2012.

87. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870, 5.

88. Chan, Chris King-chi, “Strike and Workplace Relations in a Chinese Global Factory,” Industrial Relations Journal, 40 (2009), 60–77Google Scholar; Chan, Chris King-chi, “Class Struggle in China: Case Studies of Migrant Worker Strikes in the Pearl River Delta,” South African Review of Sociology 41 (2010), 61–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Katznelson, “Working-Class Formation: Constructing Cases and Comparisons,” 20.

90. Ibid.

91. Chan, The Challenge of Labour in China.

92. The data with detailed sources and short description was produced by Parry Leung, who has worked in independent labor NGOs in Hong Kong and researched labor conditions in the PRD since 2000. An interview with him found that the data were produced from his wide reading of NGO publications and media research using the search engine of the internet database Wisenews. The author is indebted to Leung for sharing his research data.