[lbo-talk] Patrick Bond responds on Chinese labor market

[Doug Henwood]

[this bounced because the whole article was appended, bringing the  
length of the post to 50k, which is just too long - is there a URL? -  
needless to say, these stats are at odds with the Conference Board's,  
which show total employment up 14.4% from 1990-2002, or 1.1% a year -  
a 3% annual decline compounds to 43% over 12 years, which is just  
totally implausible - I don't see how you get 10% growth in GDP with  
a near-halving of employment]

From: Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
Date: January 16, 2008 3:46:46 PM EST
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] more China stats

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Patrick's view of a shrinking Chinese labor market is hard to  
> support with actually existing stats, though perhaps he has some  
> better ones.

Ah, I remember now, that Marty is away in Ecuador on sabbatical and  
off email. Ok, here's the key 'graf from his MR article with Paul:  
"Analysts that do acknowledge the difficult conditions under which  
Chinese workers labor, generally view them as a temporary cost that  
must be paid as China continues its industrial forward march.^ As  
they see it, what is critical is that, in contrast to much of Africa  
and Latin America, China’s industrial growth continues to draw more  
and more Chinese into formal labor-market relations, thereby  
advancing modernization and a progressive process of development.  
However, they are wrong... Significantly, regular formal wage  
employment in China’s urban sector actually declined at an annual  
average rate of 3 percent over the period 1990-2002. Total regular  
(formal and informal) wage employment remained basically unchanged  
over this period, registering a zero average rate of growth. Only  
irregular employment grew, increasing at an annual average rate of  
18.5 percent."