When: Thursday, March 10, 2022, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PMWhere: Room LG1, Queen's Building, Mile End
Speaker: Dr Chris K.C. Chan, Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This presentation sets out an investigation of workers’ contestation of pension arrangements in post-socialist, authoritarian China and Vietnam, and considers the effects of their actions. Based on case studies of two notable strikes, interviews and documentary research, we show that pension provisions and welfare regimes in China and Vietnam have been constantly contested by workers. It also shows that labour resistance has influenced welfare arrangements at various levels in both countries, and that the Vietnamese state was more accommodating to workers’ pension demands than the Chinese state, because of its more strongly redistributive orientation and, relatively, less controlling political system.