The Evolution of Labor Policy in Mainland China

Abstract

Thanks to the government’s Marxist employment policy, under which every individual had to have a job, mainland China enjoyed a low unemployment rate during the first three decades of the Chinese Communist Party regime. With the coming of economic reform, however, the side- effects of this full employment policy have been exposed one after the other and unemployment has become an increasingly prominent problem. Over the past decade, the regime has made efforts to reform its labor employment system on market-oriented lines. But solving the unemployment problem will require further reforms in areas other than the employment system.