Posted on 10/27/2002 4:01:14 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Pent-up anger among millions of retrenched workers is threatening to sweep the nation like a tidal wave
WAITRESS Fan Zhaocan earns just 600 yuan (S$130) a month, a third of the average wage in Beijing. She counts herself lucky.
She is one of the 17.2 million workers retrenched from grossly inefficient or bankrupt state-owned enterprises (SOEs) who found work after subsidised job re-training.
At 44, she is thankful she has landed a job at the banquet department of a big hotel after being idle for only a year or so.
'My pay is not much but I am glad I can at least help meet my family's expenses,' she told a China Central Television reporter interviewing her for a programme on retrenchment.
Some 10 million other retrenched workers - a gross under-counting, if you believe those commentators who habitually disbelieve Chinese statistics - have not been so fortunate.
According to official figures, the average age of those retrenched is 40, and 40 per cent of them have only lower secondary education or less. They take at least three years to land their next job, if at all there is one.
In the meantime, they go on the dole - which ranges from 156 yuan a month in Xian in Shaanxi province, one of China's poorest, to 300 yuan a month in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, one of its richest.
According to official data, 70 per cent of retrenched workers bring home less than 300 yuan in social security benefits each month.
So for them, getting re-employed can mean eating three meals a day instead of one.
The bad news is that the competition for jobs gets progressively tougher. According to official figures, 12 million leave school or university each year to enter the job market.
Millions more flock from poor rural areas to cities to look for work. The latest estimate is that to date, 150 million have already done so.
The massive effort put in by the Chinese government to create jobs for retrenched workers, which goes largely unreported in Western media, has helped to mitigate the tremendous strain on society.
But the rate of re-employment has slowed down. It was 50 per cent in 1998, 42 per cent in 1999, 36 per cent in 2000, 30 per cent last year and only 9.1 per cent for the first half of this year.
While the Chinese have tried hard to cope with this huge problem, it has boiled over periodically, especially in places where life has already been harsh all along.
In the spring of 2000, for example, thousands took to the streets and wrecked two small cities in the north-east, Huludao and Liaoyang.
And just weeks ago, hundreds of workers in Xian staring retrenchment in the face blocked roads leading to their factory in protest.
Such incidents, while still sporadic and relatively small-scale, cannot but suggest that China could be sitting on a time bomb.
Indeed Hu Angang, who heads a think tank in Qinghua University and is said to have President Jiang Zemin's ears, has warned publicly that unless tackled speedily, pent-up anger over retrenchment can sweep all over China like a tidal wave, causing far greater instability and chaos than the 1989 Tiananmen Incident.
China's top leaders know that only too well. That was why they held a two-day national conference in Beijing in mid-September to focus on re-employment.
At the conference, attended by practically every central, provincial or city leader of any importance, Mr Jiang stressed that finding jobs for the retrenched was not just an economic problem but also a major political one.
The message from him and other key leaders who spoke, including Premier Zhu Rongji, was that somehow, money must be found to provide relief for retrenched workers and the government must do whatever it took to find them jobs.
And lest officials down the line did not get it, they were left in no doubt that their performance would be measured by how well they had helped retrenched workers.
But there was also a caveat - Mr Jiang made it clear that economic reform must go on, even if that should result in retrenchment. Otherwise, China would not be able to cope with the challenges that would invariably come with its entry into the World Trade Organisation.
Delegates left the conference a very troubled lot indeed, given the delicate balance they must now strike between reform and retrenchment.
One of the solutions they are likely to reach for is developing at full tilt the services sector.
According to calculations by a noted economist, Professor Qiu Zhaoxiang, every one million yuan invested in heavy industry would yield 400 jobs, 700, if invested in light industry, and 1,000 in the case of the services sector.
And there is room for growth because the services sector accounts for only 30 per cent of China's GDP, compared with the 50-60 per cent average for developed economies.
Bicycle repairman Zhu Yaoqing, 42, will testify that investing in services pays off.
Retrenched five years ago, he got tired of hunting fruitlessly for a job and decided to start a small business.
With some savings and official help in the form of tax exemption, he started repairing bicycles for students and residents living in the vicinity of several universities in Shanghai.
Today, he owns 36 such shops and provides jobs for many other retrenched workers.
Mr Jiang and other top leaders, due to account to the people at the Chinese Communist Party's 16th congress from Nov 8, can do with many, many more such success stories.
They and the next generation of leaders have an uphill task in tackling this most severe among China's many challenges.
But there is reason for hope. According to a recent People's Daily report, the economy needs to grow a yearly 7 per cent over the next five years in order to create 40 million jobs.
Given the rate at which it has been growing - 7.9 per cent last year - China's leaders have a fighting chance of staying on top of the unemployment problem.
It is in the interest of its neighbours and friends that they succeed in their race to defuse this time bomb.
</sarcasm
And their standard of living is headed our way.
< /sarcasm
He makes twice as much money.
Or everything he buys is half the price.
Back in the '50s and '60s, a single "breadwinner" could support a family in a lifestyle that now requires multi-income sources for many American families to obtain.
I guess you never heard of the double-digit inflation we suffered during the '70s and '80s.
I believe it, numnutz.
I prefer keeping it that way.
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