Things get ugly in China. From the Times of India:
BEIJING: Chinese leaders have finally admitted that the country is facing a “grim” situation on the employment front owing to the global economic crisis. An official survey has shown that demand for labour has fallen 5.5% in the third quarter of this year across 84 different cities.
Yin Weimin, head of the ministry of human resources said that labour discontent was a “top concern” of the government as the employment situation has turned “grim”.
The government is clearly worried that unrest among jobless workers would result in protest demonstrations and unruly scenes. The past weeks have seen strikes by taxi drivers in four cities and a workers’ riot at the party headquarters in Gansu province.
China has nearly 150 million migrant workers, who have left their rural homes in central and west China to work in the factories of South China. The extent of unemployment caused in factories cutting back production following loss of export orders is still not known. But the number might prove to be big enough to cause social tension, sources said.
Several weeks ago, I wrote about the hype surrounding China’s inevitable rise to superpowerdom and how it was essential that the Chinese government maintain a 9-10% growth rate just to provide jobs for new people entering the workforce.
Clearly that growth rate isn’t happening now and was unsustainable in any event. The $565 billion stimulus package just announced is additional proof of the one thing that truly frightens the Chinese leadership: internal chaos and loss of control.
With 150 million migrants from the countryside wandering around the southern provinces, the leadership has reason to fear ‘social tension.’
A pleasant euphemism, that.
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