On Dec 26, 2010, at 8:40 AM, Eric Beck wrote:
> Everyone assumes that
> this expansion must have brought about a historic increase in the size
> of the Chinese industrial working class, but that is flatly false. The
> latest statistics show that, on balance, China did not create any new
> jobs in manufacturing between 1993 and 2006, with the total number of
> such workers hovering around 110 million people.
Well yeah, but that's a narrow conception of the working class. Overall, according to the ILO. China's labor force was 792 million in 2009, up about 8% from 2000. It's up over 50% since 1980.
Employment in agriculture is up 3% since 1987 (also according to the ILO), but up 11% in industry and 110% in services. Service employment was 48% of employment in industry in 1987 - in 2007, it was 91%. That's a pretty classic sign of economic development.
> Of course, over
> these years China became a global industrial powerhouse, but it did so
> not through opening new markets or innovating new productive
> techniques...
I'm not sure that was ever true, but it's certainly not true now - China has begun to innovate a lot on its own. It did so the same way that the U.S. and Japan did - by stealing other countries' technologies and then developing them on their own.
What is the point of this sort of exercise? China is a remarkable story of economic growth and the growth of an unusual form of capitalism, one with a still-heavy hand of the state.
I love this vignette from the September 23 Financial Times:
> There was more than a little historic symbolism on display as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger posed for photos in front of a Chinese-built bullet train in Shanghai last week.
>
> The “Governator” was on a shopping trip to Asia looking for trains, technology and funding for the planned high-speed upgrade to his state’s rail network, much of which was built in the 19th century by Chinese labourers.
>
> “What I have seen is very, very impressive,” he said in Shanghai. “We hope China is part of the bidding process, along with other countries around the world, so that we can build high-speed rail as inexpensively as possible.”
>
> Beijing could hardly have asked for a better celebrity endorsement for its “harmony express” high-speed trains, which its state-controlled rail companies are churning out for new lines across the country and beyond.
>
> But for the European, Japanese and North American companies that have provided much of the technology for the country’s programme, the visit put the spotlight on a worrying trend.