Why China’s Workers are Losing Their World by Marc Blecher
		1 | 2 | 3 Even those who were faring poorly in the new market environment believed that competition and market allocation of employment and income were both right and were more effective than the planned economy, although many had done well under the latter. The following was a typical response from the individuals I interviewed: "Enterprises' development should not all proceed the same way. I support reform. It is necessary. Competition is right." This sentiment was surprising coming from a 47-year-old worker whose factory was economically endangered and who had a difficult time supporting his family with the wages he received. One sea-change brought about by the rise of the market occurred in the mid- to late-1980s, when workers' wages became dependent on the economic health of their particular enterprise rather than on the state. As enterprises became independent economically, workers in prosperous firms experienced high wages, better employment security, and more benefits than the employees of less prosperous firms. The economic health of an enterprise was often a matter of luck. If workers happened to find themselves in a sector that was faring badly, or in a plant with particularly incompetent management, they would suffer. This new economic structure provided an objective material basis for a sense of injustice among workers on the losing end. Yet very few of my informants had developed such sentiments. When I raised the issue in interviews, most of my interlocutors were puzzled, often indicating that they had not thought about their circumstances in the manner I described. It was difficult to get them to understand the changed situation to which I was inviting their reaction, although they lived it on a daily basis. That itself is evidence of market hegemony. When I succeeded in pointing out this situation, the following response was typical: "Yes, it's unfair that some people lose out simply because their enterprises are doing badly. I felt this. But I didn't express it. Partly this is because I saw that enterprises all over Tianjin were suffering. Mine wasn't the worst." The last two sentences reflect an important aspect of hegemony--the view that a situation is natural and inevitable. Many men I interviewed expressed this sensibility. Others grounded their acceptance of the situation in the logic of the market. However, once they began to think about the new enterprise-based inequalities among them, whom or what did workers hold responsible? Many drew a blank. "In the 1970s all workers were paid around the same. Now the differences [in salary] are pretty large. I feel this is unfair. Some people earn too much money, and some earn too little. They are all workers, so why should the differences be so great? I don't know why workers who do a good job have to be laid off. Maybe it's that the country is too large and overpopulated--I can't figure it out. There definitely are lots of unreasonable things going on." Most workers conceptualized the issue of their dependence on their firms' economic condition by focusing directly on the causes of their firms' particular economic condition. Where it was poor, they tended to blame a number of factors, but usually not the state. Some chalked up their declining situation to fate or bad luck. Often they blamed their managers rather than the state. 1 | 2 | 3
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