| Volume 6, Number 4, October 2009 |
Building an Indigenous Civil Society
With the ICS as a Case
by 朱健刚 Zhu Jiangang |
How the Financial Crisis Has Highlighted the Struggle of Migrant Workers
by 刘开明 Liu Kaiming |
| THE twenty-first century sees a rapidly transforming and ascending China. On the one hand, the market economy, growing rapidly in China, has raised the level of material life for its citizens; on the other hand, while China has successfully realized its economic reforms, it remains comparatively fossilized in its political transformation, leading to a tendency of “transformational fixation”.(1) Thus, for a long time in the past, interest claims of various social strata and groups and proposals for social development find it difficult to get onto the government political agenda, and society and environment have paid a heavy price as a result of this phenomenon. At the same time, the Chinese people have been experiencing a painful feeling in that they are spiritually rather empty and feeble. The loss of core values that could be universally accepted makes it difficult for China to become a real big power in the world. In order to solve this dilemma in social development, social transformation has accelerated unexpectedly since the end of the last century... [ Read more ] |
SINCE 2004, because of the increasing scarcity of workers in developed coastal areas and the Chinese government’s ongoing promotion of laws to improve workers’ rights,(1) migrant workers are better able to negotiate their wages in the labour market, workers’ wages are slowly but surely increasing and there are factories where working conditions have improved. But in October 2008, the outbreak of the global financial crisis proved a serious setback to the state of employment in China and at least 20 million migrant workers and 8 million urban residents have lost their jobs. The financial crisis has clearly highlighted the struggle of migrant workers.
How many migrant workers actually lost their jobs in 2008? There is not yet any accurate, authoritative figure. According to reports from China’s mainland media, between October 2008 and January 2009, 670,000 small businesses were forced to close in China(2) and the unemployment rate in China’s cities has already climbed to 9.4%.(3) But in the areas hit worst by the crisis, the Pearl River and... [ Read more ] |
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| Issue 6.4 |
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World Mutation or
Epochal Challenge?
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