中国人口流动的决定因素
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Planned economies attempt to control not only the “commanding heights” of industry, but also the movement of their people. The transformation of China’s economy into the powerhouse it is today came about only after Chinese were allowed to leave subsistence farms for factories and cities. Two big developments in China in the last few weeks show that the planners’ instinct to channel population flows and the labour force has not disappeared, despite the power of market forces in the world’s largest economy.
Apple’s primary manufacturer Foxconn last week announced it would take “immediate action” to stop students working overtime to produce the iPhone X after a Financial Times investigation revealed the practice in its vast factory in the interior city of Zhengzhou. This is not the first time this has happened. Five years ago, under nearly identical circumstances, Foxconn was criticised for pulling in students to work overtime at Zhengzhou and other plants to produce the iPhone 5. In both cases, cheap overtime labour was needed to get Apple’s hot new product into stores before Christmas. Foxconn opened the Zhengzhou plant in part because the Henan provincial government promised lower wage costs. No-one considered that workers had already left for places where wages are higher. When Foxconn and other manufacturers require sudden production peaks inland China’s lower wages do not attract enough temporary workers. Luckily for the companies, they can turn to the vocational technology schools, which function as concentrated pools of low-cost labour. Students can be paid less than the adult workforce. Moreover, students can be returned to “school” without an expensive lay-off process, since they were never formally “employees”. If students refuse “work experience” on assembly lines, schools can withhold graduation certificates. Not graduating would be a terrible waste of tuition paid by parents hoping the qualification will put their children in better jobs than assembly line work. It is a credible threat for teenagers who have already disappointed family hopes by failing tough high school or college entrance exams. Essentially, the vocational technology schools allow China to keep manufacturing wages lower for longer, despite demographic shifts that would otherwise make its products more expensive. One shift that has drawn cheap casual labor away from inland manufacturing bases such as Zhengzhou is that China’s growing prosperity has created a vibrant service industry. In wealthy cities like Beijing and Shanghai, a comfortable middle class now depends on nannies, rapid home deliveries and $4 lattes served by chic baristas. These booming services have lured an army of migrants to the slums that ring Beijing. Others cram into basement rooms underneath expensive apartment blocks and shopping malls. But the city government regards them as “low-level people” who are a drag on public services, like transportation, schools and hospitals. It wants to move them out and limit the population to 23m. For two years the city has made it harder for migrant children to attend school and demolished cheap housing. This month, a fire in an over-crowded building killed 19 people, including children. That tragedy triggered a massive slum clearance campaign, displacing tens of thousands into the winter cold. The idea is clearly that they will just “go home”. But home to where? Most migrants under the age of 35 have no idea how to farm, and anyway, the farms are being reconsolidated into agribusinesses. Instead China’s new plan is to keep its vast population out of the biggest, wealthiest cities, and encourage them to settle in small provincial cities. But public resources are concentrated in the main cities. Provincial towns and cities do not have a surfeit of decent jobs. What they have is over-crowded, underfunded schools and sub-standard hospitals — and assembly-line manufacturers assured of plentiful cheap labour in the hinterland. |
