When Do Chinese Workers’ Protests Survive? Conditions and Causes for the Backlash of Repression

Under what conditions does state repression of workers’ protests backfire rather than suppress? Chinese authorities quell many labour protests swiftly, yet others persist and escalate despite coercion, and the sources of this variation remain unclear. Through process-tracing of four critical cases, the Yue Yuen Strike, the Jasic Incident, the Ansteel Lianzhong Protest, and the Quang Viet Protest, this article argues that repression outcomes are shaped before the state resorts to force. Two pre-repression conditions together generate what we term institutional cooptation failure: the absence of a channel binding workers to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), and leadership by migrant workers. The two interlock, since migrant-led protests are rarely absorbed by a union whose organizational routines are anchored in locally registered workers. By relocating the determinants of protest outcomes from the aftermath of repression to the institutional terrain that precedes it, the study shows how cooptation failure can paradoxically sustain the mobilization of excluded workers and blunt repression under authoritarian rule.