IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/3522.html

China's employment challenges and strategies after the WTO accession

Author

Listed:
  • Zeng, Douglas Zhihua

Abstract

Although China has made impressive progress in economicdevelopment and improving social well-being, it is facing many daunting challenges while transforming toward a knowledge and service-based economy and further opening up to international competition after its WTO accession in the context of knowledge revolution. One of the biggest challenges is how to create 100-300 million new jobs in the coming decade to absorb the millions of laid-offs, rural emigrants and newly added labor force. China has been successful in building high-tech parks and ICT industries, but they are limited in terms of employment generation, while most of the traditional labor-intensive industries are losing competitiveness due to low productivity. In order to combat the unprecedented employment challenge, China must implement a systemic and sustained strategy, which may consist of the following policy thrusts: encouraging the private sector; promoting small and medium enterprises; expanding the service sector; reforming the state-owned enterprises; strengthening the social security system; improving labor market flexibility; and establishing mass retraining programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Zeng, Douglas Zhihua, 2005. "China's employment challenges and strategies after the WTO accession," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3522, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3522
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2005/03/06/000090341_20050306115351/Rendered/PDF/wps3522.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fan Zhai & Zhi Wang, 2002. "WTO Accession, Rural Labour Migration and Urban Unemployment in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(12), pages 2199-2217, November.
    2. Tang Jun, 2001. "Joining the WTO, the Employment Problem, and How to Deal with it," Chinese Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 51-72, May.
    3. Kung, James K S & Lee, Yiu-fai, 2001. "So What If There Is Income Inequality? The Distributive Consequence of Nonfarm Employment in Rural China," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(1), pages 19-46, October.
    4. repec:wbk:wbpubs:13920 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. John Knight & Lina Song, 2003. "Chinese Peasant Choices: Migration, Rural Industry or Farming," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(2), pages 123-148.
    6. Yao, Shujie, 2002. "China's rural economy in the first decade of the 21st century: problems and growth constraints," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 354-360, December.
    7. Zhang, Anming & Zhang, Yimin & Zhao, Ronald, 2003. "A study of the R&D efficiency and productivity of Chinese firms," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 444-464, September.
    8. Vincent Wai-kwong Mok, 2002. "Industrial productivity in China: the case of the food industry in Guangdong Province," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 29(6), pages 423-431, October.
    9. Rozelle, Scott & Huang, Jikun & Zhang, Linxiu, 2002. "Emerging markets, evolving institutions, and the new opportunities for growth in China's rural economy," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 345-353, December.
    10. World Bank, 2003. "China - Promoting Growth with Equity : Country Economic Memorandum," World Bank Publications - Reports 14643, The World Bank Group.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zeng, Douglas Zhihua & Wang, Shuilin, 2011. "China and the knowledge economy : challenges and opportunities," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4223, The World Bank.
    2. Janet Ceglowski & Stephen Golub, 2007. "Just How Low are China's Labour Costs?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 597-617, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. C. Duvivier & S. Li & M.-F. Renard, 2013. "Are workers close to cities paid higher nonagricultural wages in rural China?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(30), pages 4308-4322, October.
    2. Glauben, Thomas & Herzfeld, Thomas & Rozelle, Scott & Wang, Xiaobing, 2012. "Persistent Poverty in Rural China: Where, Why, and How to Escape?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 784-795.
    3. Allan N. Rae & Xiaohui Zhang, 2009. "China's booming livestock industry: household income, specialization, and exit," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(6), pages 603-616, November.
    4. Qingjie Xia & Colin Simmons, 2004. "The Determinants of Labour-time Allocation between Farm and Off-farm Work in Rural China: the Case of Liaoning Province," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(2), pages 169-184.
    5. Van den Berg, M. Marrit & Hengsdijk, Huib & Wolf, Joost & Van Ittersum, Martin K. & Guanghuo, Wang & Roetter, Reimund P., 2007. "The impact of increasing farm size and mechanization on rural income and rice production in Zhejiang province, China," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 841-850, June.
    6. Lindbeck, Assar, 2006. "Economic-Social Interaction during China’s Transition," Working Paper Series 680, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    7. Hongqin Chang & Jing Liu & Yanyun Gao, 2017. "Land tenure policy and women’s off-farm employment in rural China," Working Papers PMMA 2017-03, PEP-PMMA.
    8. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing, 2005. "The potential of land rental markets in the process of economic development: Evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 241-270, October.
    9. Yinhua Mai & Xiujian Peng & Peter Dixon & Maureen Rimmer, 2014. "The economic effects of facilitating the flow of rural workers to urban employment in China," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(3), pages 619-642, August.
    10. Z. Jun Lin & Shengqiang Liu & Fangcheng Sun, 2017. "The Impact of Financing Constraints and Agency Costs on Corporate R&D Investment: Evidence from China," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 17(1), pages 3-42, March.
    11. Keigo Nishida, 2014. "Agricultural productivity differences and credit market imperfections," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(8), pages 1262-1276, December.
    12. Woo Sung Kim & Kunsu Park & Sang Hoon Lee & Hongyoung Kim, 2018. "R&D Investments and Firm Value: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-17, November.
    13. Alan de Brauw & John Giles, 2017. "Migrant Opportunity and the Educational Attainment of Youth in Rural China," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(1), pages 272-311.
    14. Qiuqiong Huang & David Dawe & Scott Rozelle & Jikun Huang & Jinxia Wang, 2005. "Irrigation, poverty and inequality in rural China," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 49(2), pages 159-175, June.
    15. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing, 2007. "Land rental markets in the process of rural structural transformation : productivity and equity impacts in China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4454, The World Bank.
    16. Vendryes, Thomas, 2011. "Migration constraints and development: Hukou and capital accumulation in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 669-692.
    17. Qunyong Wang & Zhongwu Li & Xueliang Feng, 2019. "Does the Happiness of Contemporary Women in China Depend on Their Husbands’ Achievements?," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 710-728, December.
    18. Sanhua Sheng & Hua Li & Weijun He & Thomas Stephen Ramsey & Liang Yuan, 2023. "The effect of property rights and staff structure on the labor productivity, evidence of university spin-offs in Hubei Province, China," International Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, Springer;The Society for Reliability, Engineering Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM),India, and Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden, vol. 14(5), pages 1855-1865, October.
    19. Sun, Xiuli & Li, Haizheng & Ghosal, Vivek, 2020. "Firm-level human capital and innovation: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    20. Bingdao Zheng & Yanfeng Gu, 2022. "Institutional dynamics and access to non‐farm employment in rural China, 1950–1996," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(3), pages 265-289, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3522. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.