Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness
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RESISTANCE, REPRESSION, RESPONSIVENESS: WORKERS AND THE STATE IN CHINA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Isaac Manfred Elfstrom January 2017 © 2017 Isaac Manfred Elfstrom RESISTANCE, REPRESSION, RESPONSIVENESS: WORKERS AND THE STATE IN CHINA Isaac Manfred Elfstrom, Ph. D. Cornell University 2017 This dissertation examines the impact of labor unrest under authoritarianism. It uses evidence from China to explore the possibility that autocracies, especially state socialist and post-socialist ones, are uniquely vulnerable to worker resistance and therefore react to it in a dual manner, at once repressive and responsive. Drawing on an original dataset of strikes, protests, and riots by Chinese workers, I find that increases in unrest are correlated with both increases in public security spending (repression) and pro-labor rulings in formally adjudicated employment disputes (responsiveness). Using a “most similar” case comparison informed by field theory, I then show how in Jiangsu’s portion of the Yangtze River Delta, moderate industrial contention is paired with governance that can be characterized as preemption, caution, and nudging, while in Guangdong’s portion of the Pearl River Delta, high contention is paired with reaction, experimentation, and crackdowns. Thus, consistent with the dissertation’s quantitative analysis, repression and responsiveness are stronger where resistance is more widespread, but governance is also qualitatively different. I argue that, at the level of local governments and local officials, there is a logic to this divergence between the cases: militant workers make a liability of the state’s commitment to stability, thereby threatening the careers of officials, who must, as a consequence, demonstrate grit and creativity. Two issues remain: the role of regional political elites and diffusion between regions. I find that the ideologies of particular local politicians do not alter the protest-policy relationship. However, even as protest tactics diffuse outward from the country’s hotspots of contention, official counter-measures against protests also spread. Worker resistance thus profoundly influences authoritarian rule, but not in a linear manner. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Manfred Elfstrom has a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Before beginning his doctoral studies at Cornell University, he worked for several years in the non-profit world, supporting workers’ rights in China as a Campaigns Coordinator for China Labor Watch and a Program Officer for the International Labor Rights Forum. Mr. Elfstrom has also studied Chinese village elections with the Carter Center’s China Program and taught in rural Shanxi Province, China. Beginning in August 2016, he will be a China Public Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The support and guidance of many people and institutions made this dissertation possible. I would first like to acknowledge my incredible advisor, Valerie J. Bunce, who read over multiple drafts of each chapter, offering advice that was prompt, thoughtful, and peppered with wry humor—and that invariably challenged me to rethink and extend my arguments in important ways. Her approach to studying politics, at once deeply creative and grounded, is a continuing inspiration. My other committee members, Eli Friedman, Andrew Mertha, and Sidney Tarrow each added something different. Professor Friedman, a friend from before Cornell, was always available to hash over Chinese labor issues and helped me root my empirical work in strong theory. Professor Mertha drew on his extensive field experience to show me how to navigate my time in China and helped me identify the distinctive elements in my tangle of findings. Professor Tarrow, among other things, pushed me to conceive of my work in a broader context and think about how I structured my comparisons and understood my mechanisms. My outside reader, Jeremy Wallace, similarly provided extremely useful input. Although not on my committee, Sarosh Kuruvilla, my advisor at Cornell’s ILR School for two years before I transferred to the Department of Government, was also critical to my studies, helping me to think through what I truly wanted from my degree and showing me the ropes of research and publication. Outside of Cornell, I benefited immensely from China’s committed community of labor and politics scholars, especially Chang Kai, Liu Cheng, Meng Quan, Shen Yuan, Wen Xiaoyi, Zhu Guanglei, and more than anyone else, Wang Kan. During my last year of writing, I was based at the Center for China Research at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Asian Research. I am grateful to Timothy Cheek, Pitman Potter, Christopher Rea, and Yves Tiberghien for making my stay at UBC possible. Short visits to the Universities Service Centre for China iv Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2014 and 2015 provided me with access to an impressive array of primary sources and a base for meeting with Hong Kong scholars and activists. I also owe a tremendous debt to scholars at Columbia University and Oberlin College, where I received my master’s and bachelor’s degrees, respectively, especially Thomas Bernstein and Marc Blecher. Professor Blecher, in particular, has patiently read over many articles and reports I have put together over the years, offering his encouragement and incisive feedback. Generous financial support from several sources made my dissertation possible. During my field research, I relied upon a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation, a Lee Teng-Hui Fellowship in World Affairs from Cornell University’s East Asia Program, and a Cornell University Graduate School Travel Grant. Two Mario Einaudi Center International Research Travel Grants, an ILR School International Travel Grant, and a Hu Shih Memorial Award (also from the East Asia Program) supported preliminary trips to China. During my year writing my dissertation, I benefited from a Sage Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Before beginning my doctoral studies, a Shansi Fellowship from Oberlin College allowed me to live in rural Shanxi Province for two years, and I will always be grateful to the fellowship’s wonderful directors at that time, Deborah Cocco and Carl W. Jacobson. A grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies Program gave me the chance to improve my Chinese language skills during my master’s degree. My engagement with Chinese social issues dates to my years spent in the non-profit world. There, a wide circle of activists, academics, and activist-academics interested in China informed my thinking. These included, among others, Earl V. Brown, Anita Chan, Ellen David-Friedman, Paul Garver, Aaron Halegua, Alan Howard, Kevin Lin, Edward Patrick McDermott, William Nee, Li Qiang, Sun Aijing, and Cathy Walker. Alan Howard, in particular, made scores of trips v together with me to China, and our conversations on those trips still influence me today. At the International Labor Rights Forum, I learned much from working together with Bama Athreya, Jeffrey Becker, Brian Campbell, Yulan Duggan, Tim Newman, and Trina Tocco. A year spent documenting the progress of Chinese village elections as an intern at the Carter Center with Liu Yawei also gave me important insights into the politics and institutions of the People’s Republic. Most of all, I have been influenced by China’s domestic circle of labor and human rights advocates. These brave, perceptive, and sometimes quarrelsome individuals present me with a dilemma: their names deserve to be high on the list of my intellectual debts, but naming them here would implicate them in my findings at a time of considerable political sensitivity in China. Therefore, they regretfully remain anonymous. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the many people beyond the worlds of academia and activism who have directly and indirectly made this dissertation possible. These include my dear friends—they know who they are!—who have expanded my thinking about the world and have given me a supportive circle within it, checking in on me when I have begun to disappear too much into my work. Also deserving of profound thanks are my parents, Tove and Susan, and my sisters, Miriam and Madelene, who have followed all the ups and downs of the project, showing interest and support throughout. My wife Freya, through the example of her engagement on human rights issues, has reminded me which questions really matter and which do not. She has been excited about my dissertation even when I have been completely worn out and has repeatedly checked over my work, correcting poor grammar and poor logic alike. Finally, I am grateful to my son, Rowan, who was born during the writing stage of my studies and has made everything in life exciting anew. vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Biographical Sketch iii Acknowledgements iv 1. Introduction 1 a. The Case of China 2 b. Rising Labor Unrest in China 3 c. China’s Dual Transformation from Below 6 d. Implications for Workers and Authoritarian Regimes 7 e. Existing Analyses 9 f. Mixed Methods 18 g. Organization of the Dissertation 20 h. Summary 24 2. Resistance, Repression, and Responsiveness 26 a. Pressure Exerted by Worker Resistance 27 b. Responsiveness 33 c. Repression 35 d. The Average State Response Over Time 36 e. Disaggregating China 38 f. Observable Implications 38 g. Dependent Variables: Public Security Spending and Judicial Rulings 39 h. Independent Variable: Labor Unrest 42 i. Controls 43 j. A Control Not Included: Rural Unrest 46 k. Model and Results 48 l. Robustness Checks 56 m. The Dual Reaction Broadly Confirmed 57 3. Cases and Fields 59 a. Limits of Statistical Analysis 60 b. Benefits of Case Studies 60 c. Case Selection 61 d.