This article examines workers’ changes in a Sichuan state-owned enterprise established during Third Front initiative. Taking qualitative research methods based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork, it demonstrates how SOE reforms reshaped workers’ capital resource and social status, transforming the formerly secure working class into wage-dependent labour through workers’ narratives on their work and life histories. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital and Marxist class analysis, the study tracks workers’ capital losses through welfare shrinkage, declining skill value, and work-unit network disintegration, explaining how these shifts represent changed labour relations, as institutional protection gave way to market control. The case points out widening divisions among workers, indicating a fragmented working class and a redefined class structure in post-reform China.
Shan Huang (Thu,) studied this question.