Mo Rong

Human rights refer to the basic rights to which every person is entitled based on his or her nature and dignity under certain social and historical circumstances. Simply put, the term means that everyone has the right to live and develop in a free and equal manner.

Article 42 of the Chinese Constitution stipulates that Chinese citizens have both the right and obligation to work. The right to employment is a basic right for our citizens. The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2012-2015) points out that efforts will be made to implement a more active employment policy, improve the wage system, fully carry out the labor contract system, improve working conditions, strengthen labor safety and protect the people’s right to work.

Employment is a worldwide problem. At present, the world economic recovery is arduous and tortuous, the employment situation is more complicated, and the youth and long-term unemployment problem is striking. In China, a developing country with the world’s largest population, the employment issue is more difficult and complicated than in any other country in the world. China,which has a population of over 1.3 billion, including 1 billion working-age people, is constantly under severe employment pressure. The basic pattern has not been changed that the supply of labor is more than the demand, and the total number is still large and increasing. Employment pressure falls on three major groups:

First of all, the task of finding employment for surplus agricultural workers is pretty heavy. According to statistics, 37 percent of the labor force in China is still in the agricultural sector. Based on the experience of countries like Japan and South Korea, the requirement for employment transfer from the agricultural sector is more desperate and the speed of transfer is usually the fastest when we are in a development stage where the proportion of agricultural workers falls to 30-40 percent of the total. According to calculations, there are still about 100 million surplus agricultural workers, which creates great pressure for employment transfer out of the agricultural sector. We must accomplish the transfer of 8 million agricultural workers each year in accordance with the goal set by the Employment Promotion Plan (2011-2015).[page]

Second, the youth employment problem with college graduates as the main group is quite prominent. The total number of college graduates this year is 6.99 million,more than six times that at the beginning of the 21st Century, and will increase year by year. This grouprepresents more than half of new jobseekers if unemployed graduates from previous years are added. Due to the slow adjustment of the supply structure of college graduates and the prominent problem that their qualities and skills are unsuited to the needs of our job market, it is an extraordinarily arduous task to provide these new members of the labor force with job opportunities and realize reasonable and effective allocation.

Finally, reemployment for laid-off workers and employment for groups with job-hunting difficulties still confront enormous difficulty. In recent years, the registered urban unemployment rate in China is less than 4.3 percent. Although this rate is not so high, workers who are constantly unemployed or face unemployment risks are characterized by being relatively old, having a low education level, and lacking skills that meet the requirements of industrial restructuring. Therefore, it is a long-term and arduous task to reduce the unemployment risks these hardlyemployed people are facing and help them become employed or reemployed.[page]

The Chinese government regards promoting full employment as a priority in its efforts to safeguard and improve the people’s livelihood. We have adhered to implementing the employment priority strategy and a more active employment policy, and have taken a series of measures to create more jobs, promote start-up businesses, improve workers’ professional skills and strengthen employment services. Under the circumstances of the complicated and volatile economic situation and huge employment pressure, we have realized the constant enlargement of the employment scope and the further optimization of the employment structure, and thus have maintained a stable employment situation. The Chinese government clearly puts forward the administrative idea that employment is the foundation of people’s livelihood and a strategy for stabilizing the country, and emphasizes that we should implement the development strategy of expanding employment, promoting employment through start-up businesses and taking full employment as the primary goal of our economic and social development. As a result, the government has implemented a more positive employment policy, thus becoming a basic act of the Chinese government to ensure human rights.

To do a better job in employment, China has formulated and implemented a positive employment policy, and begun to promote it as a law on the basis of gradual improvement. In 2008, the Employment Promotion Law came into effect, turning the implementation of a positive employment policy into a law for the first time in history, and making clear the policy of expanding employment. According to the law, the policy coverage is transformed from focusing on laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises to making overall arrangements for various groups from urban and rural areas. The policy of promoting employment – from its emergence to development to maturity, and finally to becoming a legal institution – has created a positive employment policy system with Chinese characteristics. The Chinese government has also formulated and implemented the Employment Promotion Plan (2011-2015), which is the first national employment promotion plan in China.

Since the stipulation and implementation of the positive employment policy, China has had great achievements in its employment work.[page]

First of all, we have successfully solved the problem of reemployment for tens of millions of laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises. Since the positive employment policy was implemented, over 30 million laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises have been properly settled, more than 28 million laid-off and unemployed people have been reemployed and the basic social security system for laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises has been successfully transformed into an unemployment insurance system, which basically resolves the problems of laid-off workers caused by transformation of the system and effectively supports the reform of state-owned enterprises. In retrospect, if this problem had not been properly handled back then, the reform and restructuring of state-owned enterprises could nothave been carried forward smoothly, and might even have created some serious social problems.

Second, we have successfully relieved the pressure of another wave of young employment seekers. In the past several years, China has experienced a new wave of employment seekers since the people who were born in the mid-1980s began entering the job market, and the employment pressure created by college graduates and other members of the newlyemergent labor force has been unprecedented. Due to sustained and rapid economic growth and effective support by the positive employment policy, the employed population is constantly increasing, and employment pressure has effectively eased. A total of over 57 million jobs were created in China’s urban areas during the 11th Five-year Plan period (2.1 million more per year than during China’s 10th Five-year Plan (2001-2005) period), nearly 45 million underemployed rural workers have taken up new jobs in nonagricultural sectors, and 7.72 million people with job hunting difficulty have been reemployed. As of the end of 2010, employed people in urban and rural China totaled 761 million with an increase of 63 million over 2005, including 347 million employees from urban areas. .[page]

Third, we have successfully coped with the enormous impact of the global financial crisis on employment. Driven by the more positive employment policy, we quickly reversed the declining trend ofnew jobs in urban areas in the second half of 2008, and employment in the first half of 2009 basically recovered to the level before the financial crisis. In 2010, new jobs created in urban areas even rose to 11.68 million, and the registered urban unemployment rate was less than 4.3 percent while the initial employment rate for college graduates stayed above 70 percent. By contrast, in many countries in Europe, America and Africa there has been no recovery in the economy,and many of those countries have experienced an unemployment rate of over 9 percent and subsequent severe situations with various social conflicts and political unrest. Therefore, we should say that it has not been easy for China to make such accomplishments in employment, which have made an important contribution to the maintenance of growth, livelihood and stability. The International Labor Organization even showed and popularized the Chinese experience at the Report Conference on China’s Employment Policy to Handle the Global Financial Crisis held in Geneva in 2010.

Last but not least, we have remarkably improved China’s employment pattern. As the urban and rural structure and the industrial structure are under adjustment, a large number of surplus agricultural workers have been employed in nonagricultural sectors, and real progress has been made in our urbanization and dual economic transformation. In 2010, the proportion of people employed in primary, secondary and tertiary industries was 36.7：28.7：34.6,respectively.To be more specific, the proportion of people employed in primary industries fell again in 2008 to below 40 percent after having fallen steadily to below 50 percent in 2003, which we think has some symbolic meaning. The proportion of people employed in secondary industries increased from 21.4 percent in 2002 to 28.7 percent in 2010, an annual increase of 0.91 percentage point, reversing its long-time lingering around 22 percent since the 1990s, while the proportion for tertiary industries increased from 28.6 percent in 2002 to 34.6 percent in 2010, an annual increase of 0.75 percentage point.[page]

In the future, China’s economic development mode will undergo an enormous change, since the Chinese government adheres to the road that we respect economic laws by achieving progress through quality, efficiency and sustainability and realizing growth by constantly transforming the economic development mode and optimizing the economic structure. The government also seeks to realize higher employment quality, which mainly refers to more job opportunities, an equal and fair employment environment, good work capabilities, reasonable employment structure and harmonious labor relations. Achieving high-quality employment and putting a priority on providing job opportunities has become a highlight of the work of the Chinese government.

(The author is from the Institute of International Labor and Social Security, and the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.)