In Atomized Incorporation, Sungmin Rho offers a thought-provoking and historically grounded theoretical framework that traces and explains the dynamics of labor contentions and policy responses in contemporary China. The analysis begins by sketching the broader background of Chinese state-labor relations after the reform and opening-up period. The past coercive institutional arrangements governing labor, underpinned by the Hukou system and economic policies favoring labor-intensive industries, had become politically and economically unsustainable after decades of wage growth that boosted migrant workers' bargaining power. These structural changes confronted the ruling regime with the pressing challenge of dissipating heightened labor discontent without fundamentally compromising its grip on power.

Rho argues that the Chinese government has used what she terms “atomized incorporation” to cope with this dilemma. On the one hand, the regime incorporated workers into the policymaking process and promulgated progressive social and labor legislation aimed at enhancing workers' welfare and labor protection. On the other hand, such inclusion and policy responses disproportionately benefited a small segment of the working population and only allowed for atomized, cellular forms of labor mobilization. In other words, rather than fundamentally