Industrial automation in China’s “Workshop of the world”

The Chinese government has announced major plans to provide subsidies to upgrade industry through automated manufacturing and robotization. This article examines how the government in the southern city of Dongguan, a leading center of the country’s export industry, has promoted a “Replacing Humans with Machines” initiative to improve the prospects for local manufacturers facing toughening business conditions since 2007. We explain the conditions that informed the “Replacing Humans with Machines” initiative, reveal findings based on numerous on-site interviews with officials, factory managers, and workers about the effects of automation in Dongguan, and analyze the implications for the labor market. We find that the subsidies awarded by the Dongguan government to support automation in local firms played only a minor role in the firms’ automation strategies. Instead, the main drivers of automation were competitive market pressures to reduce the workforce, step up productivity, improve product quality, and deal with occupational health and safety. Workers coping with the effects of automation have suffered variously from deskilling and displacement, although in some cases they were offered upskilling through additional training. Copyright © 2018 by The Australian National University.