Since the 1980s the concept of “lean production” has attracted much attention and sparked off considerable debate among social scientists on work and workplace restructuring. On the one hand, the MIT researchers, who coined and popularized the term lean production, have vaunted lean production as representing a fundamental, progressive break with Taylorism and Fordism that will lead to a more fulfilling workplace and empower workers (Womack, et al. 1990). On the other hand, critics have contended that rather than representing a qualitative break with the Fordist regime, lean production is essentially a modified form of Taylorism and Fordism (albeit leaner and more flexible) because assembly line, standardization, volume production, and capacity utilization remain central to the lean production paradigm (Berggren 1993; Babson 1995: 14; Price 1995). Ethnographic studies of the impact of lean on workers cast a more skeptical view on the “empowerment” claim, as researchers find lean production is often associated with the intensification of work and greater managerial control, without real empowerment of workers (Graham 1995; Parker and Slaughter 1995; Mehri 2005, 2006). With respect to its implementation, contrary to the claim of MIT researchers that the principles of lean production are “applicable anywhere by anyone” (Womack et al. 1990: 7), cross-national comparisons have shown wide variations as well as limits in the adoption of lean production in different national and local contexts (Kochan et al. 1997; Jürgens and Krzywdzinski 2016). While there has been growing interest in the spread and implementation of lean production in China, most of the existing literature has focused on the problems and effectiveness in implementing lean production by Chinese manufacturers from the perspectives of management and business consultancy (see, among others, Taj 2008; Chen and Meng 2010). To date we know relatively little about how lean production has affected the workplace and workers in the Chinese context.1