Lu Zhang

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Temple University

My past and current research has been focused on globalization, labor movements, and the political economy of development in East Asia, especially China. I am working on a book manuscript about the current conditions, subjectivity and collective actions of Chinese auto workers. This work explores how global capitalism, national state institutions and socialist legacies, and shop-floor labor activism have interacted in complex ways to produce the specific labor relations and dynamics of labor unrest in the Chinese automobile industry. It is based on twenty months fieldwork and over 300 in-depth interviews in seven automobile enterprises in six Chinese cities between 2004 and 2011.

I am also working on a new research project that explores the causes and impacts of capital relocation within China (from coastal to inland regions) and out of China to the new low-cost sites (such as Vietnam). This comparative case study investigates the geographical relocation of two electronic manufacturers from the same eastern coastal region under the pressure of rising labor costs and strengthening labor legislation in China. While one opted to relocate to an inland Chinese city, the other moved to Vietnam. The study aims to gain some insights into the sustainable economic and social development strategies of central and local governments in developing countries, and how these interact with labor-state relations in the context of capital mobility. This research is part of my larger inquiry into the foundations and mechanisms of state-labor-capital relations and development trajectories of post-socialist and post-revolutionary regimes in an era of globalization.