Social unrest no issue at China's country side - Arthur Kroeber

Arthur Kroeber by Fantake via Flickr

Gloomy reports in Western media on mass dismissals and social unrest among China's migrant workers as the export industry seemed to suffer from downsizing have proven to be wrong, writes Arthur Kroeber (together with Tom Miller) in todays Financial Times. In Henan province, largest supplier of migrant workers, not over 20 million workers became unemployed, but rather half a million, a manageable problem in the heavy populated province.
Restructuring of the state-owned industry has costs 50 million jobs between 1995 and 2005, in size a much larger problems as many of the laid-off were really no longer fit for the labor market. From the FT:

Aside from some localised protests, sacked workers have been far busier finding new jobs than venting their rage. This is unsurprising: migrants working in export factories and construction sites are accustomed to finding work where they can and many have been dismissed before. Chinese migrant labourers are among the most flexible in the world....

This is not to make light of the current situation: millions of vulnerable migrants have lost their jobs and times are tough. But the resilience of China's workers should not be underestimated, and fears of social unrest caused by unemployed migrants have been greatly exaggerated.

 Commercial
Arthur Kroeber is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau . If you are interested in having him as a speaker, do get in touch.

Related articles by Zemanta

• China: stability at all costs - Arthur Kroeber (chinaherald.net)
• China's new fuel tax - Arthur Kroeber (china-speakers-bureau.com)