The new working class in China has had to struggle against both capital and state every step of the way from its very inception. It struggles against the state in the form of the ACFTU and the police, both of whom actively support the employers and strike break. Migrant workers also struggle against the state for the democratic right to settle in industrial cities and towns of their choice. In respect of their struggle against capital, these predominantly women workers must look for ways of organising outside the official trade unions but also in ways that also counteracted the discipline of the dormitory-labour regime.[1]
Chinese workers increasingly self-organise within their individual workplaces to press for higher wages, on-time payment of wages and social security benefits. It is claimed that, in Guangdong alone, there is now at least one strike a day involving over 1,000 workers, with many smaller strikes occurring. So far, these individual strikes have not coalesced into a broader, co-ordinated movement, which would, almost certainly, incur a speedy government crackdown.
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Pun, N, Gender and Class, International Labor and Working Class History, No81, Spring 2012, pp178-181.