Chinese Er

International Business Review 9 (2000) 345–361 www.elsevier.com/locate/ibusrev

An emerging model of employment relations in China: a divergent path from the Japanese?
Ying Zhu a a,*

, Malcolm Warner

b

Department of Asian and International Studies, Victoria University of Technology, PO Box 14428, Melbourne City MC, Victoria 8001, Australia b Cambridge and the Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1AG, UK

Abstract This article sets out an emerging model of Employment Relations (including Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management) in the People’s Republic of China, particularly in terms of the formation of a distinctly ‘Chinese’ version. It follows the historical logic of its evolution to evaluate the transformation from a traditional Industrial Relations system to a contemporary Employment Relations one. In this overview, the article attempts to see how far such changes in China in varying degrees were influenced by the both Western and Japanese IR and HRM influences, particularly comparing and contrasting its own adaptations of these with those of its close neighbour. It concludes while many of these notions and practices took root in China, fundamentally different cultural, economic, historical, political and societal factors have determined the outcome of a culturally distinctive Employment Relations system, as ever, ‘with Chinese characteristics’. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Chinese characteristics; Corporatism; Employment relations; Human resource management; Industrial relations; Japanese management; Labour force; Labour Law; Trade unions; Tripartism

1. Theoretical background In her book, Translingual Practice, Liu (1995) explores how broadly speaking many Western concepts were introduced into China, by often transliterating terms

* Corresponding author. Tel.: [phone]; fax: [phone]. E-mail addresses: [e-mail] (Y. Zhu),

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