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The Emergence of Autonomous Collective Negotiations in China How can autonomous collective negotiations emerge in a country with a political system that recognizes neither the right to strike nor the right of association? To answer this question, I draw upon field work carried out in southern China in 2013-14 among workers’ leaders, workers’ defense organizations and a law firm specializing in labor law. In particular, I show how these actors in practice gradually effect change in forms of representation and conflict management by adopting an apolitical stance and deferring to rational and pragmatic considerations of a type the Party can hardly dismiss. In this way, the manner in which power is exercised by China’s authoritarian regime is even renegotiated. At present, however, these collective negotiations are merely ad hoc and localized forms of conflict resolution and, as such, are faced with difficulties of institutionalization and systematization. ■