with social stability. If they win and the economy really takes off and China becomes a
developed country, then all will benefit. If they lose, then they will lose big”.
Several lines of re-employment policy have been implemented at both the central
and local levels with differing effects on the ground. Ultimately, re-employment policies
have been neither the abject failures some foreign scholars have considered them to be
nor the measured successes that most Chinese policy makers have claimed. Rather, the
success of re-employment polices has varied significantly among regions, with certain
regions consistently scoring successes while others continue to flounder. Furthermore,
all policies that have been advanced so far have carried largely unnoticed unintended
consequences that vary by region as well.
Beginning with the 15
th
Party Congress in 1997, all “surplus” workers were to be
designated as xiagang (literally, “off-post”). Moving workers into this status, pursued
under the slogan of “Jian Yuan Zeng Xiao” (Cut Staff, Increase Efficiency), was to be a
primary way for all firms to reduce costs and advance their “modernization”.
The
category of xiagang was to become liminal in the true sense, since it was construed as an
explicit threshold to the market. Newly xiagang workers were to register with and enter
the care of zai jiuye fuwu zhongxin - “re-employment service centers” (RSCs)
centers were to provide the workers’ basic living allowances, job training, and job
34
Interview, 48 year-old, female, laid-off bureaucrat, Shanghai, May 2002.
35
See, for example: Wang Fengsheng Zhongguo Guoyou Qiye Gaige zhi Tansuo [Probing the Reform of
Chinese SOEs] Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2001; Chen Qingtai “Tuijin Guoyou Qiye
Gaige de Zhugong Mubiao” [The Main Goals in Pushing ahead the Reform of SOEs] in Ma Hong and
Wang Mengkui eds. Zhongguo Fazhan Yanjiu: Guowuyuan Fazhan Yanjiu Zongxin Yanjiu Baogao Xuan
[Chinese Development Research: Selected Research Reports of the State Council Development Research
Center] Beijing: Zhongguo Fazhan Chubanshe, 2000 - pp.280-304. On the contradictions of this program,
and embodied in its official slogan, see: Han Jingxuan, Ma Li, and Zhang Wei “Xian Jieduan Woguo
Laodong Jiuye Cunzai de Wenti ji Xiangguan Duice” [Problems of Labor Employment and Related
Policies in Our Country in the Current Period] Tongji Yanjiu, Number 7 (2001) – p.48.
36
In line with this sort of thinking, many scholars have characterized RSCs as “transitional institutions”.
E.g.: Edward X. Gu “Dismantling the Chinese mini-welfare state? - Marketization and the politics of
institutional transformation, 1979-1999” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Volume 34, Number 1
(2001): pp.91-112.
19
Convention