The Emerging Industrial Relations of China, Edited by William Brown and Chang Kai (2017) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 250 pages. ISBN: 978-1-107-11441-8

William Brown, Britain’s leading industrial relations scholar-expert, and Chang Kai, China’s leading industrial relations scholar-expert, have joined forces to produce a first-rate volume describing the emerging industrial relations (IR) system in China. The volume is a collection of eleven chapters: two are coauthored by the editors, two are separately written by each editor, six are written by Chinese authors, and one is written by a British author. Oftentimes a reader’s first reaction to seeing an edited book with a title like The Industrial Relations System in Country XYZ, particularly when Country XYZ is far off with a different language and culture, is to stifle a yawn in expectation it is likely a rather dull, uneven, and descriptive product full of unpronounceable names and unfamiliar labour laws and institutions. This volume, I am happy to report, defies expectations and provides across the chapters a nicely accessible, interesting, and informative account of historical trends and contemporary events and challenges in the IR system of the world’s most populous and rapidly-developing nation. Quite possibly this volume would not have been published in the English language by a prestigious university press, nor have achieved its high quality, without the active involvement and time commitment of the first editor, so kudos are deserved by Professor Brown. The theme of the volume is set out in the opening paragraph of the first joint chapter by Brown and Chang. They say: “A transition from individual to collective labour relations is taking place in China. It is a consequence of employment becoming increasingly market-oriented.” (p. 21). They could have added, as Brown notes in his introductory chapter (p. 7), that the transition is equally from a Marxist version of state unitarism toward a capitalist version of institutional pluralism, albeit with Chinese characteristics indelibly stamped on it. Mao Zedong and fellow communist revolutionaries seized control of China in 1949, liquidated the capitalist and rich peasant classes, and established a collectivized socialist economy governed in Leninist-Stalinist style by a Communist Party acting as the dictatorship of the proletariat. The social balance sheet for China between 1949 and Mao’s death in 1976 contains a complex and contentious set of pluses and minuses but, on balance, the record fell short in the important areas of sustained economic growth, rising living standards, and transition to a modern, technologically advanced economy. The reaction, initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 and gradually accelerated by his successors, was to shift course and move toward a state-guided form of market economy, including greater decentralized management of enterprises, end of ‘iron rice bowl’ pay and employment security for industrial workers, and introduction of free(r) labour markets and capitalist-type employment relationships. This transition is still in motion with uncertain destination and hence the word “emerging” in the book’s title to describe the present-day industrial relations situation in China is apt and well chosen. While the book provides readers with the necessary historical big picture, the bulk of attention across the chapters is on IR developments of roughly the last decade, particularly since enactment of the Labour Contract Law of 2008 and World Financial Crisis of the same year. Both events gave China’s IR system a significant push toward a new institutional configuration, with attendant interest conflicts and power plays. The World Financial Crisis forced many China-located companies, particularly with international exposure, to do what an earlier generation of state-owned enterprises would dare not contemplate, which was to put profit and company interests ahead of workers’ interests and job protection. This shift in stakeholder priorities on the part of companies, with accompanying layoffs, speed-ups, harsh management treatment, and extra-long …