Why Hard-working and not full of Chinese People
Since reform and opening in 1978, the achievements of China’s economic rise are very prominent. China's GDP in 1980, equivalent to 4% of global GDP in 2006, has risen to about 16%. Compared with India, China's per capita GDP in 1980 is about India, 2 / 3, 1990, per capita GDP equal to the two countries, China's per capita GDP after 1990, began more than India per capita GDP today is India's per capita GDP, almost twice.
But behind this achievement, we can see many structural problems.
Look at consumption. China 1952 GDP, private consumption is about 69%, close to the United States today, the U.S. GDP, private consumption accounts for 71% level; to 1978, China's GDP, private consumption was equivalent to 45%, but until recently, this ratio had fallen to 36 % or so. By contrast, the proportion of GDP, government expenditure, from the planned economy period about 16%, has risen to about 30% recently.
Look at income. "People's Daily," an article that recently, from 1993 to 2007, labor compensation share of GDP, down from 49.49% to 39.74%, down by almost 10 percentage points. The "Beijing News" has done an estimate, more alarming figures: GDP, labor income increased from 56.5% peak in 1983, to the lowest point in 2005 dropped to 36.7%, 22-year period dropped by 20 percentage points. We live in these figures with the observed phenomenon is more consistent, that is, labor income accounted for an increasing proportion of total national income is low.
Two Americans had written an article on China's manufacturing industry, changes in employment and remuneration of the paper. They estimated that China's one-hour pay of manufacturing workers, equivalent to approximately one-hour workers of the United States pay 3%; with China, the closest the Philippines, the manufacturing workers pay almost 6% of manufacturing workers in the United States; Mexico is about 12% of U.S. manufacturing workers. Many scholars think that this is China's competitive advantage, low labor costs, and a large amount of labor. But today, this advantage is also necessary to be maintained? If we continue, this advantage is bound to become competitive in the international economy of China's long-term disadvantage, as the result of low labor costs will inhibit long-term many other healthy development, including the killing of the driving force of technological innovation.
We first look at changes in wages can be analyzed from four aspects. First, in 1978, Total Wages (not including benefits, retirement security, medical insurance and other non-pay content) is equivalent to GDP was 15.5%, but by 2008, this ratio decreased to 11.2%; second, 1978 total wages of all state-owned unit of GDP, about 13%, now down to 6.1%; the third, wages of workers in urban collective enterprises, the proportion of GDP, 2.5% in 1978 down to about 1% of the current, indicating that rural enterprises in the past ten years or more have been squeezed, getting smaller and smaller space for township enterprises; fourth, 31-year period, wage income share of private enterprise is always rising. In 2008, the non-state, non-collective enterprises, close to the wages of a total of about 5% of GDP, which is essentially zero in 1978, but the increment is still unable to change the overall GDP, the ratio of labor income growing trend of lower.
In fact, from 1990 to 2008, the average labor wage growth rate of workers is always lower than the growth rate of GDP. According to my calculations, this time, the annual growth rate of total wages than the average GDP growth rate 3.8% slower.
In addition to China, are there any other countries a similar phenomenon? In 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor research paper manufacturing unit of hours in different countries had a system of remuneration for comparison. I have to do something based on their analysis of the data found that from 1996 to 2007, these 12 years, manufacturing labor income Asian countries, according to an annual rate of about 2.4% of growth, this growth rate minus the growth rate of GDP over the same period will find, the growth rate of labor wages in these countries than in the same period of slow GDP growth by 2 percentage points on average. Of course, this growth rate is better than the situation in China.
Europe, the situation is completely different: from 1996 to 2007, the wages of manufacturing workers in these countries at an annual growth rate of 5.6%, higher than the GDP growth rate. Wages of manufacturing workers in North America during this period, according to the average annual rate of about 3.9% increase, slower than the GDP growth rate of about 0.8% better than the situation in a number of Asian countries.
