Beyond Industrial Democracy: The State-Corporatist Logic of Mandatory Employee Directors in China's New Company Law

China's 2024 Company Law introduces a mandatory requirement for employee directors in limited liability companies with more than 300 employees, marking a significant shift from state-owned enterprises to the private sector. While traditional legal scholarship interprets this as a deepening of labor protection or an optimization of corporate governance similar to the German co-determination model, these explanations fail to fully account for the state-centric nature of this institutional design. Drawing on a cross‑disciplinary approach that combines law and political science, this article argues that the new provision embodies a state-corporatist logic. It suggests that the mandatory employee-director regime functions not merely as a tool of industrial democracy, but as an institutional channel through which the state integrates, monitors, and steers large‑scale private enterprises, thereby pursuing the dual objectives of social stability and economic security.