The author discusses the capacity of labour NGOs to strengthen the associational power of Chinese workers in globalized production networks by using their leverage to pressure multinationals into launching programmes to elect workers’ committees in factories. Based on an empirical survey conducted between 2012 and 2019 in southern China, he shows that such programmes helped to raise workers’ awareness of collective action and strengthen their agency, but that they ground to a halt in the face of the structural inequality of the production system, the lack of institutional protection for elected representatives and a hardening regime.