The Chinese Communist Party has sunk all of its legitimacy, understandably, into the continued growth of the Chinese economy and a steady increase in their citizens’ standard of living.
One of the “nightmare” scenarios for China watchers is that, faced with an inability to generate enough jobs to satisfy domestic needs, the party turns to aggressive nationalism as an alternative means of staying in power. But with thawing relations between Taiwan and China, the party’s targets are more limited than they once were.
So what to do? How about force companies to continue employing workers?
Companies in two Chinese provinces, Shandong and Hubei, have been told they must seek official consent if they want to lay off more than 40 people.
The order highlights the Chinese authorities’ concern over mounting job losses.
As China’s main external markets plunge into recession and export orders shrink, layoffs have multiplied in the country’s big manufacturing regions.
In Shandong alone, nearly 700,000 people have lost their jobs this year.
In southern Guangdong, tens of thousands of firms have closed, sparking off reverse migration to the countryside by redundant workers.
China’s economic growth has slowed sharply this year to around 8 percent – high by world standards, but much less than the double-digit figures seen for years.
If the one-off boost from the Olympics is factored in, even that number may be further reduced.
Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.
He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.
He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
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