Labour reform is only one component of the larger process of reforming economy and society experienced by China during the late 1970s, 80s and 90s, and it is probably that part of this process where paradoxes emerge most clearly. This book suggests a two-level analysis: labour theory and consequent policy- and law-making emerging from a rapidly changing ideological environment from the beginning of Deng's Reform clash with the social and practical contradictions of policy implementation that emerges in the second part of the book, together with an increasing resistance by society vis a vis...