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Wal-Mart's lack of sensitivity when expanding in China has got an abrupt end. Only a few weeks ago, the country's top trade union leader Wang Zhaoguo singled out the retail giant as a particularly bad case of anti-union behaviour. He also said that legislation may be needed to give the workers a real opportunity to establish union locals under the All-China Federation of Trade Unions ACFTU umbrella.

It did not take long before the first local trade union emerged in a Wal-Mart store in in Quanzhou in south-western China. Now, unions have already been established in 22 of the company's Chinese stores. There are still 37 stores to go, and apparently Wal-Mart has seen it wise to agree with the ACFTU about how they will be unionised.

First party local continues Wal-Mart's forced adaptation to Chinese labour relations

Today, news was finally out that the first Wal-Mart store had got its Communist Party and Communist Youth-League locals as well. As reported by China's news agency Xinhua, the announcement about the new party and youth league branches were made by a Chinese Communist Party official in Shenyang, the capital of north-eastern Liaoning Province.

The party's workplace structures will not remain a feature of only the Shenyang Wal-Mart store. It is clear that party and youth league locals will fast emerge all through the Bentonville multinational's Chinese store network. This will bring Wal-Mart into the ranks of large state-owned companies and others, where a triangle consisting on the Communist Party structure, the trade union, and the management form the elements of workplace and company level control.