China’s Transition to Collective Labor Relations: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Mechanisms

Abstract The article analyzes the development, characteristics, and tendency of China’s labor relations and the labor movement in recent years. It points out that China has begun the transition from individual labor relations to collective labor relations with the strike wave in the summer of 2010 as the main turning point. In the process of transformation, there are two kinds of forces and two ways to accomplish the labor movement. One is the top-down labor union movement led by the authorities within the system; the other is the bottom-up labor movement formed spontaneously by workers outside the system. The article particularly analyzes the emergence of, and mutual relationship between these two types of transition, as well as their influence and significance on China’s labor relations.