在加拿大
ANALYSIS Layoffs among migrant workers will testgovernment stability YBEIJING u Yongding, an eminent economics professor in Beijing, recalls how the well-off Chinese he used to come across at plush hotels overseas were mainly Taiwanese. Today, they are more likely to be mainlanders. LUCAS SCHIFRES/ BLOOMBERG FILES
A farmer carries brushes to burn for heating and cooking in his thatched mud house in Yongfu village, 200 km northeast of Jiamusi city and 150 km from the Russian border, in China’s Heilongjiang province. It’s among the country’s poorest regions. “ I don’t know how they get so rich!” Yu exclaimed. “ Income distribution is very problematic in this country.” And it is a problem that is set to get even worse. As long as the rising tide of economic growth was lifting all boats, the widening gap between rich and poor was generally tolerable. Now, as the economy turns down sharply, tensions are mounting, to the evident discomfort of China’s leadership. Zhou Tianyong, a researcher at the ruling Communists’ Central Party School in Beijing, said a surge in unemployment next year and an increasingly skewed distribution of wealth “ through theft and robbery” could even test the party’s grip on power. “ This is extremely likely to create a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil,” Zhou wrote this month in the China Economic Times, a paper published by a state think-tank. China has done a remarkable job during the past 30 years of market reforms to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But some have done better ― much better ― than others. In 1985, urban Chinese earned 1.9 times as much as people in the countryside, which is home to 60 per cent of the population. By last year, they earned 3.3 times as much ― a ratio that rises to between five and six if unequal access to basic public services is taken into account, according to the UN’s latest Human Development Report for China. In 2006, the report added, the richest 10 per cent of urban Chinese families had nine times more disposable income than the poorest tenth. China is not alone. The Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of inequality, has risen in two-thirds of developing Asian countries since the early 1990s, the Asian Development Bank calculates. If income was shared out perfectly equally, the coefficient would be zero; if all income was in one person’s hands, it would be one. China’s Gini coefficient stood at about 0.30 in the late 1970s, but had risen to about 0.45 in 2005. And now comes the financial meltdown, which is already taking a toll on poorer workers on low wages and casual contracts. In recent weeks, millions of migrant workers have been streaming back to their villages from shuttered factories in eastern China. “ Those people who are at the bottom of the income and wage hierarchy will be hit much more than those who are the top,” said Gyorgy Sziraczki, a researcher at the International Labour Organization ( ILO) in Bangkok. “ So it’s very likely that the current crisis will bring increasing wage and income inequalities in the coming two to three years,” he said. What is to be done? Some governments were stirring even before the financial tsunami struck. Hong Kong, a bastion of free enterprise, introduced a voluntary minimum wage for selected low-wage jobs two years ago to protect the working poor. It proved ineffective, so the government now plans a universal statutory minimum wage. Strengthening other labour market policies could also mitigate income inequalities. Malaysia, for instance, has announced retraining grants, something that South Korea introduced ― along with unemployment insurance ― after the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. “ What we learned was that one of the preconditions for having a prescription for the crisis was to strengthen the social safety net,” said Kim Choongsoo, South Korea’s ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. “ To overcome the crisis you have to restructure ― and if you don’t strengthen or expand your social safety net, you can’t do it. How can you pursue a restructuring policy with social unrest? People wouldn’t agree to it,” Kim said. Translating that lesson into the current Chinese context, researchers say the imperative for Beijing is to massively increase ― and better distribute ― spending on health, education and pensions. According to Chinese research cited by the United Nations, between 30 and 40 per cent of the urban-rural income gap can be explained by unequal access to such public services. That is because government outlays on things like schools and clinics amount to a subsidy for consumers, who would otherwise have to dig deeper into their own pockets. Strengthening public services would also dovetail with the declared intent of several governments, including China’s, to boost domestic demand and rely less on exports and related investments. “ If many countries head in the direction of more balanced growth in the future, that could have a positive impact on income inequalities. It would also be more acceptable for people from a social point of view if they see that they benefit from growth,” said Sziraczki, the ILO researcher.
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