In 1988 one of the authors visited China on an International Labor Organization (ILO) project to discuss industrial relations and human resource practices in advanced economies with Chinese government officials, academics, and practitioners. He discussed free trade unions and strike activity in the provinces bordering Hong Kong. He was invited back the next year, but after the Tiananmen Square protest, it wasn’t possible to return until 2002. By the end of the 1980s, employment relations and unions were changing on each side of the Taiwan Strait, but both countries were still under one-party rule. The unions in both countries were viewed by the West as “transmission belts”—conveying the wishes of the political party in power, the Communist Party in China and the Nationalist Party (KMT) in Taiwan, where martial law had just ended.Over a dozen years later, globalization and Westernization are much more pronounced, and it is possible to reflect on the changes in both countries. China and Taiwan, with similar historical and cultural backgrounds, have moved from centrally planned economies and authoritarian ruling parties to more open and market-driven economies with new labor laws. Their transformation has implications for workers in the United States, and these should cause American labor organizations to engage Chinese and Taiwanese unions in further dialogue and discussion.
