Urban School-leavers and Unemployment in China

Abstract

What is unemployment in China? For 20 years after the Great Leap Forward was officially credited with having achieved full employment in 1958, this question could not even be raised in the People's Republic of China. From the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and up to 1958 unemployment problems had been prominently featured in the Chinese press. In 1978 unemployment again became a topic of discussion. The reappearance of unemployment as an acceptable subject of debate was a further indication of how much of Maoist ideology had been officially discarded since the death of Mao Zedong two years earlier. One Chinese summed up these changes as they related to employment problems in this way2: Employment is a major economic as well as a major social problem. But from 1958 until the destruction of the “gang of four,” problems of employment virtually constituted a taboo which could not be discussed in public. After the smashing of the “gang of four” and especially after the third plenary session of the 11th Party Congress (December 1978), a new employment policy was decided on. This was a strategic decision of immense significance.