The Deepening of Legal Preemption in China: Using Government Legal Aid to Demobilize Workers and their Advocates

For over two decades, China has implemented a “legal preemption” strategy of encouraging workers to enforce their legal rights through litigation in order to preempt their tendency toward collective action. During most of this period, there was some space for unlicensed “barefoot lawyers” and labor nongovernmental organizations (ngo s) to provide meaningful assistance to workers by representing them in this litigation process. This article argues that even those limited openings for civil society participation in this area have narrowed as China’s legal preemption strategy has deepened: the government has sought not only to steer workers into the litigation process but also to control who represents them in that process and which tactics they may use. Specifically, the government ramped up its own legal aid programs, in which licensed lawyers beholden to the state represent workers, in order to squeeze out unregulated barefoot lawyers and labor ngo s. The article describes how and why this was done. The article then considers the implications of this transition for workers seeking legal representation and the future of China’s labor ngo s.