Anyone still pretending that China’s authoritarians are committed to free-market principles?
Companies in two Chinese provinces, Shandong and Hubei, have been told they must seek official consent if they want to lay off more than 40 people. The order highlights the Chinese authorities’ concern over mounting job losses.
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The Chinese authorities are keen to avoid social instability, seen as a source of labour and political unrest. The human resources controls imposed in Shandong and Hubei are an attempt to put bureaucratic obstacles in the way of mass layoffs.
While it is somewhat difficult, in the wake of TARP, to insist that we ourselves are any less socialist (see also, “Directive 10-289“), at least we haven’t quite gotten to the point where employers are enslaved to their employees (wasn’t the concern the other way around under original theories of socialism?). But give it time: if Paulson or his successor suddenly decide that forbidding layoffs is the next idea to try, they’ll try it. Just you wait…