ILPC 2026

Despite China’s recent progress in labor legislation, labor law enforcement has remained weak and uneven. While existing accounts of the weak, uneven labor law enforcement focus on local states’ resistance or poor capacity of implementation, we contend that the causes are more complicated involving not only local states but also other employment relations actors as well as their interactions. Drawing on logics of action theory, theory of segmented labor market, literature of China labor studies, as well as our extensive field work, we develop a theory of selective enforcement of labor laws in China. We argue that China’s labor law enforcement is contingent on how specific regulations are written, local political economy factors such as level of economic development, economic growth rate, wage level, and degree of labor conflicts, employer characteristics such as industry, ownership, and size, and employee attributes such as hukou, gender, education, work position, and political affiliation. Further, time periods associated with significant institutional changes matter as they may influence labor law enforcement both directly and indirectly through shaping the effects of other factors. Results of multilevel analysis of the Chinese General Social Survey from 2006, 2008 and 2013 largely supported our hypotheses.