Class formation in high-tech information and communications as an aspect of China's reintegration into transnational capitalism.

摘要

This dissertation examines the changing political economy of China's ICT development and explores major ramifications of the rise of this "pillar" industry on domestic employment structure, class relations, labor conditions and class identities. Recognizing information and communications technology (ICT) as the most dynamic industrial sector, and China as the leading growth zone in the contemporary market economy, this study attempts to understand an ongoing historical process of ICT-driven class formation in relation to the broader socio-economic and political transition in China within the reorganization of the global information economy.;China's leaders have designated ICT as a strategic industry in their state-led effort to carve out a stronger position in the global economy. This dissertation situates China's ICT development in terms of the interplay between these broad transnational trends and domestic policies and institutional arrangements. This dissertation specifically highlights the centrality of Chinese labor in this context. Shifting class relations and identities in the ICT industry comprise a sensitive and portentous field; my dissertation probes the social, political and historical construction of the labor market and managerial practices in the ICT sector, as well as practices and subjectivities of contemporary Chinese ICT workers.