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Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific
Managing Transition: Unemployment and Job Hunting in Urban China
By Ming Tsui
Abstract
This paper explores the impact of layoffs on the lives of 29 urban couples in Wuhan, China, based on in-depth interviews conducted in the year 2000. One or both members of each couple was classified an off-post worker, despite having grown up believing in lifelong employment and job security.
The author examines their coping strategies and their successes and failures in job creation and job searches, as well as the relationships between these strategies and demographic variables: gender, age, education, class, social and family networks, whether or not the respondent was "sent down" during the Cultural Revolution, and whether or not the respondent received a government-mandated living stipend. The data reveals a relationship between success in re-employment and the variables of gender, the send-down experience, networks and living stipends. The author found that the least successful interviewees were working-class, poorly-educated males who had never worked in rural areas and who received financial assistance from the state.