1 Pun Ngai, 2004. “The Precarious Employment and Hidden Costs of Women Workers in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China”. Journal of Oxfam, UK. The Precarious Employment and Hidden Costs of Women Workers in

In spite of the increase in transnational codes of conduct practices at the company level and legal mobilization of labor at the societal level, despotic labor regimes in China are still prevalent. Globalization and “race to bottom ” production strategies adopted by Transnational Corporations (TNCs) work against the improvement of labor relations in China through new institutional practices and employment relations. The goal of this study is to provide a framework for understanding the working conditions of female migrant workers. While the inhumane working conditions of the women workers have been repeatedly observed, none of the existing studies have provided a solid analysis on the emergence and development of this precarious employment system in China. This article hopes to bridge the global factors (the new international division of labor and global subcontracting system) as well as local elements (the post-socialist state role, the specific urban- rural divide, and the Chinese patriarchal culture), demonstrating how they contribute to precarious employment patterns. The hidden costs of the production and reproduction cycles are still unknown (1). With China increasingly incorporated into the global economy over the past two decades, it has become a “world workshop ” providing a huge pool of cheap labour for global production. Since the mid 1990s we have witnessed a surge in the relocation of transnational corporations (TNCs) in China from all over the world, especially fro