Institutional changes in China's employment: retrospective analysis

During the period of market reform and economic opening up, China's employment policy has undergone profound institutional changes. Since 1978, in the process of building a socialist market economy with Chinese specifics, there has been a large-scale institutional transformation of the state policy of distributing the total labor force of society across territories, industries and enterprises into a policy of supporting employment through state regulation of the labor market, improving the education system and creating the institution of social protection of workers. Four stages of institutional transformation of China's economic employment policy have been identified. For more than 40 years of reform and gradual improvement over the centralized distribution of labor force, the employment policy by now organically combines the market mechanism with an effective system of state regulation of employment. It is substantiated that institutional changes in China were implemented purposefully, providing a gradualist replacement of the centrally planned distribution of labor force in the pre-reform economy by a labor market with sufficiently effective state regulation with gradual supplementation and expansion of successful rules. The impact of institutional changes on the structure of employment in rural areas is analyzed, as well as the emergence of new challenges that are associated with adaptation to the new economic system.

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