The discourse of workers democracy in China as a terrain of ideological struggle in the moment of transition from state socialism

In this dissertation, I aim to provide a better understanding of certain aspects of the reforms in the political economy of China since Deng Xiaoping reoriented the Chinese political economy in the direction of increased reliance on market based competition. Towards that end, I argue that a particular phenomenon of Chinese restructuring, namely the discourse of workers democracy that Chinese workers, enterprise administrators, intellectuals, and state bureaucrats engage and alter according to varying agendas, has undergone significant changes from the early Maoist period to the present day of state enterprise restructuring and expanded market involvement in the Chinese economy. Further, the appropriation of this discourse of workers democracy in the moment of Chinese transition from state socialism has been shaped and constrained by the systemic limits of that transition. I theorize the Chinese transition from state socialism and then look at the discourse of workers democracy as part of China's transition from state socialism. Based on field interviews with Chinese workers in small- and medium-sized state owned enterprises facing privatization, I find that workers in contemporary China retain fundamental beliefs that contributed to the core logic of Chinese state socialism. Their reinterpretation of workers democracy today is deployed, however, as part of an effort to deal with a problem that they never faced under state socialism, namely, the threat of unemployment. Research findings from the field indicate that the transition from state socialism remains both uncertain and a matter of considerable ideological contestation.