ILPC 2026

 Gap:

-Labour precariousness has been a worldwide phenomenon and has generated extensive enquiries into its multi-faceted driving forces, which can be generally categorised as the capital thesis, the state thesis, and the worker thesis. Put simply, the capital thesis argues that capital’s endless pursuit of profit in an era of neoliberal globalisation engenders precariousness. The worker thesis emphasises that some workers voluntarily choose precarious work in exchange for more autonomy over work, work-life balance, et.al.

 -The state is generally regarded as a regulator. The state thesis blames the state for deregulating the labour market. However, the state’s role as a regulator is more complex in China. Moreover, the state in China is more than a regulator.

-The enactment and enforcement of labour laws is largely separated between the central government and the local government. The implementation of the labour law is subject to the changing economic, political, and social priorities of the latter (Ching Kwan Lee, 2016).

-The conflictual interests between different state organs at the same level, for example, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, also affect the state as a regulator. 

-The Chinese state is not only a de-regulator, but also a re-regulator. After radical creation of a labour market in the 1990s, the Chinese state has initiated rounds of labour protection legislation in the new millennium. 

- The Chinese state is also an employer. According to China’s State Bureau of Statistics (SBS), approximately 20 percent of urban employment is provided by state-owned units in present-day China (SBS, 2016). According to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), state-owned enterprises are leading users of agency labour in China with 16.2 percent of their entire workforce being agency workers in 2011 (ACFTU, 2012).

-The Chinese state is also a staffing firm manager. Many top staffing firms in China, such as the FESCO and CIIC, are state-owned or even owned by labour bureaus. 

Thus, the complexity and the multiple facets of the Chinese state have the potential to expand our understanding of the role of the state in the surge of precariousness.

Methodology:

-This study is primarily based on interviews with labour officials both at the central level and at the local level, including those from Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Guangdong, and Jinan.

Findings:

-By linking the wage quota of state enterprises to its financial performance and putting them in a competitive market economy, the state pushes the state-owned enterprise to pursue profits and thereby to lower labour costs by using more agency workers. 

-The weak implementation of the labour law and the deliberate vagueness of certain stipulations allow loopholes for enterprises to escape and very often change the forms of precarious labour while retains its nature. 

-The conflictual role of the state organs hampers both the enactment and the enforcement of the labour law.

The Stage of the Research: fieldwork finished, manuscript in preparation