The Rising Gig Economy in China: Implications for the Protection of Migrant Workers

In the platform era the informal employment in China is tremendously huge in quantities. This paper sets out the changes of traditional regulatory rules status, the new web of rules and, with a particular focus on, the impacts of main actors’ interacts, from an industrial relations ‘web of rule’ perspective. The subjects involved in this paper are multiple, including labour law, collective labour relations institution, enterprise human resources management, CSRs and NGOs in production supply chains. It argues the inappropriate impacts on the perseverance of right and interests of workers are consequences of the current national labour law and collective labour relations institutions. It witnesses the emerging innovative methods, employment relations system in a self-dependent economic transaction, the rule of production supply chain in a multi-stake-holder context and the new intervening method of NGOs. It is in scrutiny of the commence of such a transformation in China, nevertheless, transforming from the authoritarian regime to a more fair market establishing via the intervention of multiple social forces, and consequently the transformation from informal employments to formal ones in a comprehensively complex domestic and global context.