Download or read book The End of Cheap Labour? written by Florian Butollo and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can China’s economy overcome its excessive dependence on exports? The Chinese government and international observers argue that this is needed if growth is to be sustained in the future. But substantial growth of domestic consumption can only be achieved if China also steps beyond its reliance on cheap migrant labour. Florian Butollo approaches this issue by means of a thorough empirical investigation of the recent transformation of industries in the Pearl River Delta, China ́s largest industrial hub. He uncovers that industrial upgrading rarely supports improvements in the basic employment pattern in enterprises in the garment and LED lighting industry. This failure of "social upgrading” threatens to undermine the project of a rebalancing of the Chinese economy. The book shows that the implementation of collective labour rights remains an important precondition for the future of the Chinese growth model.