Thomas B. Gold, William J. Hurst, Jaeyon Won, and Li Qiang (eds.), Laid-off Workers in a Workers' State:Unemployment with Chinese Characteristics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 261p. $95.00 Hardback

摘要

China's transition from a planned to market economy entailed a large-scale shrinking of its state-owned enterprise (SOE) workforce, mostly achieved in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This created a generation of laid-off (or xiagang) workers variously estimated to comprise between 25 and 60 million people. The exact size is obfuscated by statistical problems and deliberate policy ambiguity. Moreover, as the studies assembled in this comprehensive volume detail, this enormous loss of jobs was accompanied with a shift in political worldviews as well as social dislocation, and had profound consequences for political mobilization. As xiagang, a transitionary phenomenon, is drawing to a close, this timely volume offers in-depth research and reflection on this significant externality of China's economic rise.