Deng's Economic Legacy
China's dilemma: welfare state or free market?
More workers are losing their jobs: in the bustling city of Chongqing, unemployed peasants crowd around the wharf carrying bundles, cardboard boxes, baskets of vegetables, anything to earn money. In contrast, Xue Daihua works for a state motorcycle factory and gets cheap housing and subsidised medical cover. Sitting at home, she and her family beam as they sing along to their new Karaoke machine. Such factory faithfuls are dying out. A Changjiang Electrical factory is desperate for foreign investment. The workers are a constant drain on the finances and the vice-director admits that "we have a lot of workers here, therefore we have to manufacture many products". State industry and economic reform seem irreconcilable but the government has invented a class of worker who's paid to stay at home. The prospect of thousands of jobless workers signals the end of a socialist dream.
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