China's Employment, Distribution Structures Change

The proportions of employees in State-owned and collectively-owned enterprises have shrunk drastically in China, but those in the private sector have snowballed, a recent survey indicated.

Also, the largely egalitarian practice in income distribution has been replaced by one featuring " the more you work, the more you earn."

The survey by the National Bureau of Statistics with assistance from seven other government departments, sampled 170,000 residents nationwide.

In 1998, 43.8 and 9.5 percent of the 206.8 million work force in cities worked in the State and collective enterprises respectively, as against 78.3 percent and 21.5 percent respectively in 1978.

And the survey showed that in 1998, 22.9 percent worked in individual- or family-owned businesses, and another 12.8 percent worked in other forms of entities. But in 1978 merely 0.2 percent of the work force was in the private sector.

With a series of reforms in the social economic structure, there is a growing wage gap among urban citizens and employees with different educational attainments. The average monthly income for urban residents in August 1999 was 685 yuan (about US$ 82).

People with college or higher degrees, 12 percent of the total employees, had the highest average income of 980 yuan. While illiterate persons were at the bottom with only 481 yuan.

In China, the youngest group of workers have higher educational level and are best paid, a contrast to most developed countries where middle-aged people earned the most.

People aged 41 to 45 earn 30 percent less on average than those under 30, as most of the middle-aged in China grew up during the " cultural revolution" from 1966 to 1976, when the educational system in China was disrupted.

Because of laid-off workers in the cities, impoverished families became a serious problem. In August 1999, the per capita income of 6 percent of urban families was less than 100 yuan per month.

In cities in Heilongjiang, Shanxi, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions, the impoverished urban families accounted for more than 10 percent of the total. While the proportion in the relatively prosperous cities in the east, such as Beijing and Tianjin, was less than one percent.

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