Foxconn offers a glimpse of where Chinese manufacturing is heading

Foxconn, a Taiwanese "original equipment manufacturer" with 1.2 million workers in mainland China, is getting help from the US-based Fair Labour Association to train workers in voting for representatives on 18,000 union committees, according to a report this month. Up to now, all workers on the mainland have been represented by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a state-backed unelected organ more on the side of management.

This unprecedented move is rightly being held up as extraordinary. What is extraordinary is not so much that this is happening, but why it is being allowed or, rather, encouraged.

First, China aims to double its economy by 2020, to become a fully fledged middle-income nation by 2030. Many developing countries find themselves in the so-called middle-income trap, their economic growth stalling when per capita income reaches US$3,000 to US$8,000. To overcome this hurdle, China has to lift its labour productivity.

With eight million university and community college graduates added every year, China will have 195 million graduates by 2020, larger than America's entire workforce today. China's workers are thus becoming better educated and more aware of their rights, now enshrined in China's latest labour laws.

Second, the teeming millions of university graduates are China's rising middle class, with higher levels of knowledge and aspiration. Amid social, economic and political tension, the Foxconn union election augurs well as a first step towards a more inclusive and equitable society in response to changing aspirations.

The development follows on the heels of a watershed open-and-fair election in Wukan village last March. Guangdong's then party secretary Wang Yang , one of China's reformist "young Turks", personally intervened to bring it about. These high-profile events are unlikely to be knee-jerk reactions, considering the Communist Party's record of cautious political management.