This article explores effectiveness of the unionisation campaign of the Chinese union over improvement of labour rights. Through analysis on two case studies, the article challenges traditional wisdom on communist union behaviours, and argues that power interaction with companies need to be considered, since unionisation is an important approach for the Chinese union to increase its power leverage by achieving economic accumulation through more membership dues paid by the firms, along with political strength accumulation through expanding the membership base to traditionally non-unionised TNCs. During this power interaction of industrial relations actors, the union has become an interest group, whose interests are not necessarily the same as those of Chinese workers. As a result, the union undertakes flexible unionisation strategy to maximise its own interests and minimise unionisation spends, while workers are just one factor of this expense-and-return calculation of the union. Unionisation of TNCs does not translate into the rise of collective labour rights, as well as improvement of labour standards.
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