Abstract
Over the past 70 years since the founding of the PRC, China’s employment structure has undergone tremendous transformations. The labor force moved from the primary industry to the secondary and tertiary industries, and from rural areas to cities and towns. The re-coordination of labor force elements has become the source of economic growth.
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Notes
- 1.
Wan (1986).
- 2.
Resolution on Several Historical Issues of the Party since the Founding of the PRC, Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, June 27, 1981.
- 3.
The Fourth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in September 1979 passed the Decision on Issues Concerning the Acceleration of Agricultural Development, which allowed farmers to maintain their autonomy of operation and give full play to their enthusiasm for production guided by a unified national plan and in accordance with the local conditions and the time. In September 1980, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued Several Issues on Further Strengthening and Improving the Responsibility System of Agricultural Production, affirming the socialist nature of farm output quotas fixed by household. In January 1983, the No. 1 document of the Central Government, Issues of Current Rural Economic Policies, was officially promulgated, which theoretically explained that the household contract responsibility system was “a great creation of the Chinese farmers under the leadership of the Party”. It was fully promoted nationwide. In November 1991, the Eighth Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee adopted the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Strengthening Agricultural and Rural Work. It proposed to make the responsibility system based on the household contract responsibility and the two-tier management system combining unification and division as a basic permanent system of China’s rural collective economic organizations and constantly enriched and improved it.
- 4.
According to the data of the China Statistical Yearbook, there was an abnormal jump in total national employment in 1990, from 553 million in 1989 to 647 million in 1990, an increase of 17%. The same abnormal increase can be seen in the number of jobs in all three major industries. The steep increase did not occur in a single year, but was the result of an adjustment based on 1990 national census data. Cai (2017a, b) recalculates the data and obtained a relatively smooth result, which can be used as reference. But this paper still adopted official data without making any adjustments for the sake of data usage.
- 5.
In September 1997, the 15th Party Congress proposed for the first time that “the non-public economy is an important part of the socialist market economy”. In March 1999, the Second Session of the Ninth National People’s Congress adopted an amendment to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which made it clear that the non-public economy is an important part of China’s socialist market economy.
- 6.
Guo (2004).
- 7.
Survey Report on the Latest Data on the Impact of the Financial Crisis on Employment, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 2009. http://www.mohrss.gov.cn/mohrss/Desktop.aspx?path=mohrss/mohrss/InfoView&gid=1797bb22-6a46-4fc9-a46f-b16dcbb83d0b&tid=Cms_Info.
- 8.
Li and Yuan (2010).
- 9.
- 10.
Wang and Mason (2008).
- 11.
Cai and Dewen (2005).
- 12.
Kuznets (1985).
- 13.
He and He (2013).
- 14.
Xu and Jing (2015).
- 15.
Wu and Wang (2004).
- 16.
Wang and Fan (2017).
- 17.
Cai (2008).
- 18.
This paper adopts a simple calculation of labor productivity with the formula: labor productivity = GDP of an industry / the number of people employed in the industry * %.
- 19.
National Bureau of Statistics: 2017 Migrant Worker Monitoring Report, April 27, 2018. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201804/t20180427_1596389.html. Published on June 15, 2018.
- 20.
Fang and Han (2013).
- 21.
Pan and Lin (2006).
- 22.
Zhang and Wu (2005).
- 23.
Zhang (2009).
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Shan and Zhang (2018).
- 26.
Chenery and Syrquin (1988).
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
Zhang (2007).
- 30.
Cai (2007).
- 31.
Yuan et al. (2016).
- 32.
Ma and Zhang (2017).
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Zhang, Y. (2024). Transformations of Employment Structure. In: Social Development and Social Changes in China . Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-1184-0_5
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