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China’s manufacturing model has been built on the exploitation of migrant workers under a despotic labour regime. But is that still the case? Based on extensive research in the Chinese garment sector, this essay argues that while draconian controls persist up to this day, the situation of China’s migrants has undergone dramatic transformations that encompass not only changes in the workers’ demographic profile and everyday life practices, but also new social, technical, and gendered divisions of labour inside factories. From Dormitory System to Conciliatory Despotism Changing Labour Regimes in Chinese Factories For the past three decades, China’s export-led manufacturing model has been built on extensive exploitation of its migrant workforce under a despotic labour regime. Draconian controls persist, and it is easy to view both Chinese migrant workers and the ways employers subordinate them as static and unchanging. Yet the situation of China’s migrants has undergone a dramatic transformation—a shift that encompasses not only changes in their demographic profile and everyday life practices, but also new social, technical, and gendered divisions of labour inside factories. This transformation presents a formidable challenge for any conceptual understanding of how factory regimes and management controls have changed under global capitalism. How do managers exert control in Chinese factories? What are the characteristics of China’s current labour regime? To examine these changes, in 2010, I lived with several young male migrant workers for six months in a small apartment near a garment factory in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Focussing on labour-intensive, foreignowned factories where tens of millions of migrant workers have worked since the early 1990s, in this essay I trace the changes embodied by reform policies and practiced by managers and workers. My findings reveal that since the mid-2000s new modes of domination—crystallised into a new labour regime that I call ‘conciliatory despotism’—have combined coercive power with new workplace tactics and production strategies.

From Dormitory System to Conciliatory Despotism: Changing Labour Regimes in Chinese Factories