Towards a Labour Market in China

by John Knight, Lina Song

Overview

China's remarkable economic transition and capacity for dynamic growth has stunned the world. Throughout the period of economic reform, China has been moving towards the creation of a labour market. The scale of this transformation is unprecedented. New economic incentives, vast labour migration, draconian retrenchment of state workers, and sharply rising wage inequality are all characteristic of this unique transition. Drawing on more than a decade of survey-based research, the authors systematically document and analyse this important transformation. They use economic and sociological theory, institutional analysis and political economy to fully explain the causes, pressures, obstacles and consequences of the move towards a labour market in China. It is argued that much progress has been made towards the creation of a labour market but that the process is far from complete.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191529665
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	03/24/2005
Series:	Studies on Contemporary China
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

John Knight is Professor of Economics in the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Vice-Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. John has acted as an adviser to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security in China, World Bank, U.K. Department for International Development, ILO and WIDER. Dr. Lina Song is Reader in Chinese Economy and Society at Nottingham University. She was a founder-member of the Rural Development Study Group, formed in the early 1980s to advise the Chinese Government on rural economic reform. Most of her research projects have involved collaboration with Government agents, such as Chinese Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the State Committee of Trade and Industry, the State Council Office for Restructuring Economic System, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She has advised both British and Chinese governments.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1: Setting the Stage
• 2: Labour Policy and Progress
• The Urban Labour Market
• 3: Increasing Wage Inequality
• 4: The Spatial Behaviour of Wages
• 5: Rural Migrants in Urban Enterprises
• 6: Redundancies, Unemployment and Migration
• 7: Immobility and Segmentation of Labour
• The Rural Labour Market
• 8: Rural Labour Allocation
• 9: The Imperfect Labour Market
• 10: Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"Overall, this study is about as complete and coherent an analysis of Chinese labor markets in formation as any in the current literature. Essential"—CHOICE

From the Publisher