Unrest grows in China as unemployment situation becomes "grim" - 20-Nov-2008 - Generational Dynamics

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 20-Nov-2008

Unrest grows in China as unemployment situation becomes "grim"

Labor unrest is becoming a "top concern" for China's government, as China admits that unemployment has become a "grim situation."

There have been few mass protests so far, but Chinese leaders are warning of further protests.

Here's the situation as described by BBC's Singapore business reporter Juliana Liu:

Juliana Liu, BBC's Singapore business reporter <font face=Arial size=-2>(Source: BBC)</font>

Juliana Liu, BBC's Singapore business reporter (Source: BBC)

"As late as September, China's premiere Wen Jiabao was saying just how resilient China would be, but things in the last few weeks, two months, have changed so quickly that it's taken everyone by surprise. I spent most of October in Guangdong province, that's in southeast China -- this is really the heart of China's economic miracle, what's propelled the country the last 30 years -- and there the pain is really very real. And from what everyone was telling me there, you really started to see the turning point in October. It was in October that employment agencies tell me that they started to see a lot of people coming in to apply for jobs, and that's exactly when factory bosses stopped hiring workers.

The man in charge of one of China's biggest employment agencies told me that his job at that time was normally very quiet, but October-November what he was trying to do was simply prevent a stampede at this employment agency, where thousands of people could come in in a single day. ...

We did start to see factory closures at the beginning of the year, because of the strengthening of the renminbi [currency]. But in the last few months we've started to see many more factories going bankrupt, many more people being laid off.

I have to say there are no really good numbers on this. The best estimate I've seen is that one million people have lost their jobs in Guangdong province alone, and that 46,000 factories have closed up. Again, the numbers don't tell the full scale of the story. When we were in Guangdong, the pain was very real."

China is entering a generational Crisis era, and has been almost coming apart at the seams for a few years. China is headed for a secular civil war, as I wrote in 2005. In March, 2007, before the credit crisis had even begun, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said that China is "unsteady, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable."

During the last six years, I've written some 1,500 articles for this web site, describing where the world was going, based on generational trends that are decades and centuries old. Many of those articles were almost theoretical, describing things that would occur with near 100% certainty, but which seemed bizarre within the context of the world at that time.

But in the last few weeks, the feeling has been increasing that we're seeing massive events occurring, bringing about these generational trends. The worldwide financial system is collapsing more and more every day, pushing millions and tens of millions more people into poverty and starvation, especially in densely crowded megacities around the world. These large populations are becoming increasingly restless, and increasingly facing a choice of starvation or war.

To understand what's going on in the world today, you have to go beyond looking at individual statistics or political nonsense. You have to look at the world as a huge system, with large components that are now in motion and heading for collisions. It's like watching a huge movie epic that ends in tragedy, except for the unfortunate fact that the movie epic is actually real life.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Geopolitical topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (20-Nov-2008) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 20-Nov-2008 Unrest grows in China as unemployment situation becomes "grim"

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 20-Nov-2008
Unrest grows in China as unemployment situation becomes "grim"