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SEPTEMBER 27, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 12
A time bomb is ticking that China's planners are scrambling to keep from going off. To maintain growth, economic czar Zhu Rongji needs to shake up the lumbering industrial dinosaurs, which are saddled with millions of unneeded laborers. The big layoffs have already begun; the trick now is to absorb enough workers into new jobs before a social explosion scuttles the process. This precarious balance helps explain why China's reforms move in such fits and starts. Certainly labor has reason to be angry. According to the World Bank, state factories had sacked 11.7 million workers nationwide as of June 1998. Protests are harder to track. Small-scale demonstrations, once unheard of, now take place once or twice a month in Shenyang alone. All over China, there were 94,000 labor disputes last year, according to official estimates. The 1998 protest wasn't the first time Shenyang workers have made themselves heard. In 1994, the Mao statue that towers over the city's main square was set on fire. There were no arrests, and the state-run media dismissed it as an "accident." But no one in town doubted who was responsible: disgruntled laid-off workers. ALSO SEE: YALU RIVER: Taking on the Americans FUSHUN: China Invents the Perfect Soldier DALIAN: City of the Future? TECHNICAL INSTITUTE OF PHYSICAL CULTURE: Ma's Army TIME Asia home | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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