Power, material incentive, and labor productivity in China's state-owned enterprises.

摘要

The dissertation will answer the following three questions through the lens of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs): (1) How has economic reform changed the party-state relationship in China? (2) How has power shifted among different social groups in the factory in the reform era's China? (3) Why is there a persistent decline of productivity of Chinese SOEs?; The dissertation applies the clientelist model in answering these questions. To answer the first question, the dissertation compares two well-known cases of different historic periods and argues that the reform has led to a change of the focus of the party-state relationship from ideological conformity to policy convergence. That is, in dealing with the state units such as SOEs, the Communist Party leaders identify and reward their loyal followers based on their degree of commitment to reform policies during the reform rather than on the ideological zeal.; Using the data from the field work, this dissertation then studies the changing power distribution in the factory and concludes that while the resistance to the policy to separate the party from the factory management has led to different power structures in different regions, middle-level managers emerged as the big beneficiary in the management reform. Workshop floor workers became the most ostensible victims to this ongoing power decentralization in the factory.; From a micro perspective based on the findings from the field work, the dissertation developed a new approach to explain the worsening conditions of Chinese SOEs, as opposed to the prevailing institutional model. It argues that the following two factors have contributed to the SOE's downturn:; First: a continuity of party's tradition to showcase few exemplary factories in order to soar up public support for reform policies has encouraged factory leaders to prioritize policy compliance over raising productivity in the management.; Second: an increasingly disillusioned community of shop floor workers who are caught in a paradox of being excluded from the changed redistribution pattern and still cherishing the idea of the state as their welfare provider.