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China To Add More than 50 Million New Urban Jobs in 2016-2020 (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fixing-economy dept.

China is striving to create more than 50 million new jobs in urban areas over the five years to 2020, the cabinet said in an employment promotion plan on Monday. From a report on Reuters: It will also aim to hold the urban registered unemployment rate below 5 percent in the same period, according to the document published on the central government's website. "Opportunities and challenges in promoting employment coexist," the cabinet said. The government has said 13 million new urban jobs were created in 2016, beating its target of 10 million. The official unemployment rate has been hovering just over 4 percent in recent years, even as China's economic growth slowed to 6.7 percent in 2016, its slowest in 26 years.

7 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Read: China to force 50 million farmers to move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're forcibly uprooting the rural population and moving them into the cities to provide demand for the crap their factories are putting out.

  2. Nothing bad ever happened with a 5 year plan by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Funny

    Happy to hear they're sticking to regular 5-year plans. Those have always turned out well.

  3. The thing is by fubarrr · · Score: 2

    >The official unemployment rate has been hovering just over 4 percent in recent years, even as China's economic growth slowed to 6.7 percent in 2016, its slowest in 26 years.

    The thing is that they don't have much young people to man factories, and they have to many Harward PhDs.

  4. A tale of two Chinas by DumbSwede · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anything with the word China in it seems to be red-meat for the Slashdot crowd. Having actually RTFA there isn’t much in there that is different from how liberal democracies go about trying to encourage economic growth. China is mostly Communist in name, but this isn’t to say their system operates identical to ours. I have been to China seven times in the last ten years, so I can give you a reasonable impression of life there. People going about their day-to-day lives do not liver under constant fear and oppression. Life in the big cities is very modern. The country is virtually two countries in one. The modern cities and the backward villages. That said the government wields a big stick in getting big projects done (sometimes without enough forethought). I find most people fear China is going to far outstrip the west in science and economy in the not too distance future, most of the rest think it is a powder-keg about to self-destruct. Neither view is very close to the truth. As China pulls into parity with the west, it’s economy is slowing down because it no longer is leaping from behind by leveraging cheap labor and because labor is not longer staying cheap (because economic success has created a prosperous middle-class) and because automation is destroying cheap labor’s advantage anyway. China is desperate to raise everyone into the middle-class so as to sustain their economy on internal domestic consumption. So while the party is coming to a close, they still hope to get the job largely done without have two separate classes of citizens (city dwellers, versus farmers and villagers).

    --
    Letter To Iran
    1. Re:A tale of two Chinas by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      I find most people fear China is going to far outstrip the west in science and economy in the not too distance future, most of the rest think it is a powder-keg about to self-destruct. Neither view is very close to the truth.

      Violent revolutions in China are relatively common, roughly every 100 years. There have been uprisings even recently. After the global recession of the late 2000's there were many factory worker protests due to layoffs from the slumping economy due to slower overseas exports. China launched a big infrastructure stimulus package to address it, and it mostly worked.

      They are not so tied to the philosophy of capitalism such that being thrown to the wolves during slumps is NOT acceptable to most there. In the US, there is some amount of social-darwinistic thinking that says "losers" SHOULD wither and die, in order to motivate the rest to work their tushes off so that the non-losers can have big houses with picket fences. (Some suggest this comes from protestant Calvinism that says God rewards the good people in this life and lets the bad die.)

      And don't forget Tienanmen Square.

      If a big recession hit and the government couldn't stimulate or find enough jobs for the masses, China could become a powder keg of unrest. Proverbial pitchforks are not just a western thing.

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      Table-ized A.I.
  5. Re:Make China Great Again by alvinrod · · Score: 2

    Pshh... It's not like they've built a wall or anything.

  6. Re:Good luck breathing, poor SOB's. by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 2

    Says the guy who failed to read about Trump's plans to replace the entire EPA science and research departments with corporate shilled "Thunk tanks".
    Capitalism without handcuffs is fascism, every single time.