The paper examines recent developments in the international division of labor in the electronics industry resulting from the emergence of electronics contract manufacturing. The transnational production networks of major contract manufacturers are analyzed before the background of the seminal shift to vertical specialization in the information technology industry, as epitomized by the "Wintelist" model of competition and technology development. The author discusses the development of contract manufacturing in the USA and Germany and in low-cost locations in Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Eastern Europe, and the possible impact of e-commerce-based supplier relationships on international knowledge diffusion and local capability formation.

The auto workers' strikes that erupted in southern China in 2010 triggered significant labour relations reforms in Guandong province. Against this background, the author draws on extensive empirical research in leading car assembly plants and their suppliers to construct a typology of their production regimes for analysing current changes in labour relations. While this framework is helpful in understanding the growing diversity of China's manufacturing industries generally, it is used here to conceptualize the fragmentation and segmentation of labour relations between various firms, layers of suppliers and regional clusters in the automotive industry. The article concludes with a discussion of prospects for further reform.

The article examines the development of advanced digital manufacturing (as outlined in the ‘Made-in-China 2025’ government plan) from the perspective of the changing socio-technical paradigms of production. The analysis focuses on the transformations of value chains and work, based on theories of social shaping of technology, regulation theory and regimes of production. Analytically, the author proposes to distinguish between ‘production-driven’ and ‘distribution-driven’ pathways of manufacturing digitalisation. The transformation of semi-rural industrial areas (‘Taobao villages’, named after China’s largest e-commerce platform Taobao) into mass production clusters for e-commerce is depicted as a paradigmatic model of distribution-driven transformation and as a characteristic Chinese strategy in this field. The article examines the impact on industry supply chains and work, leading to ever-more precarious conditions of employment. Policy recommendations focus on local strategies to stabilise supply chain structures and working conditions, as an alternative to the present top-down approaches to manufacturing modernisation in China.

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This paper develops a new approach to analyse labour relations at the level of companies, industries, and regions in China. Referring to Western and Chinese labour sociology and industrial relations theory, the author applies the concept of “regimes of production” to the context of China's emerging capitalism. This article focuses on China's modern core manufacturing industries (i.e. steel, chemical, auto, electronics, and textile and garment); it explores regimes of production in major corporations and new forms of labour-management cooperation, the growing inequality and fragmentation of labour policies within the modern sectors of the Chinese economy, consequences for further reform regarding labour standards, collective bargaining, and workers’ participation.