Review Article : Prc Workers Under "Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics"

a new perspective from the bottom up, providing information about the reactions of ordinary workers to the changes in the enterprises. The book originated as a long report for the Asia Labour Monitor, commissioned in 1987 by trade unions from the Philippines 1. The Filipino trade unions had been alarmed to learn that overseas investors in the Baguio export-processing zone had begun fleeing to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in the PRC the moment Filipino workers began to unionize. The Filipino unions desperately needed to know how China, said to be a socialist state, could offer terms to foreign capital that were so attractive that even the Philippines could not compete. How could China allow its own workers to be paid at a level that undercut even the Filipino workers, who stood near the bottom end of the Asian labour market?