Industrial relations in China are undergoing profound changes.These changes were set in motion by reforms which ended centralised control of employment and wage fixing，reintroduced labour markets and made negotiations on labour contracts and wages extremely one-sided.Trade unions，which had no responsibility for collective bargaining under the socialist command economy，are now being challenged under the new dispensation to act as representatives of the workers under market conditions，while continuing to be under the tutelage of the party.

To obtain a better understanding of the direction these reforms are taking，Sun Yat-sen University and the FES co-hosted an international workshop on Industrial Democracy—Building Harmonious Labour Relations in April 2010 in Guangzhou.The workshop focussed on ways and means of interest representation of workers—through trade unions，workers' congresses or other means—and debated development trends in China within an international context by comparing them with interest representation in Germany，South-Korea and Vietnam.

Shortly after the workshop，a wave of wage strikes occurred in China.These events showed the limitations of an approach which focuses only on formalised structures of workers' interest representation.For a full picture of the development dynamics of industrial relations，informal workers' activism，such as irregular industrial action，must also be examined.The editors therefore decided to not restrict this reader to presentations held at the workshop but in addition invited other writers to capture more aspects of industrial relations，including recent industrial actions in China.

The Institute for Social Policy，Sun Yat-sen University and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung would like to thank the authors involved in this publication for their valuable contributions.

No bilingual book is possible without translators.Mrs.Wu Xiaozhen translated the Chinese contributions into English，while Professor Zheng Chunrong translated the English-language articles into Chinese.James Patterson copyedited all the English texts for publication.We owe them our thanks for their professional work.

We hope that this publication will be of interest.

Shanghai/Guangzhou，June 2011

Professor Kinglun Ngok

Director，Institute for Social Policy and Vice-Dean，School of Government，Sun Yat-sen University，Guangzhou

Dr.Rudolf Traub-Merz

Resident Director，Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung，Office for International Cooperation，Shanghai