The decline in employment in Chinese manufacturing has been documented in some ILO publications such as AK Ghose "Employment in China: recent trends and future challenges" at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/download/esp2005-14.pdf
David Richardson The Australia Institute -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charlie Sent: Friday, 5 September 2008 8:32 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [Pen-l] Re: [Marxism] Official priorities maintain hard life inrural China Most of this WSJ commentary is "China could..." Pardon the sarcasm, but I'm sure the CPC wants Mr. Katz's opinion. The specific measures for rural education sound like a mere sop. The original report noted the hard labor of peasants trudging behind water buffalo. The commentary admits that even so, rural emigrants to cities pose a severe employment problem. Don't expect the regime to boost rural displacement even more by funding farm mechanization in a big way. The most interesting remark: "Over the past decade, China eliminated nearly 20 million factory jobs despite the explosion in industrial output." (I've seen similar remarks but still don't know an authoritative figure. Anyone got that?) Productive expansion today simply does not require massive numbers of industrial workers. The growth decades of auto in the U.S. - 1920-1960 - required huge numbers of semiskilled workers. They were able to build trade unions successful in winning economic gains. The growth decades of modern electronics - 1970- 2000 - saw no such demand for semiskilled labor, and not enough demand for skilled labor to make a big economic difference. I tried to lay out how capitalist accumulation has reached a limit in From Capitalism to Equality: An inquiry into the laws of economic change. On a historical scale of time, the end of this mode of production is near. Charles Andrews _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
