The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace opens a window on to the world of Chinese factories and the political institutions, policies, conflicts and crises that swirled in and around them from the early 20th century to the early 1960s (with tantalizing glimpses of the Cultural Revolution and the reform period). Here, managers struggle to make a profit or just to survive, shop floor bosses jockey for position, political officials endeavour to regulate and control, and workers struggle with them all.