Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, December 03, 2010

Supply and demand with Chinese characteristics

As described by Edward Wong in this New York Times report, supply and demand are at work in creating labor shortages in some parts of China. At least that's how it looks from one perspective. How will the government respond to market pressures?

Chinese Export Regions Face Labor Shortages
Two of China’s main export manufacturing areas are suffering from an acute shortage of migrant workers, giving laborers more leverage over wages and curtailing the expansion plans of some companies…

The regions most affected, both of them coastal, are the Pearl River Delta, in the southern province of Guangdong, and the Yangtze River Delta, near Shanghai…

[E]xperts... said that a combination of rising living costs along the coast and low wages had led to an increasing number of workers deciding to stay in the interior of China, where living costs are much lower.

Some companies have moved factories inland, to provinces where many workers have traditionally come from… Transportation costs for goods being shipped out of China are higher in those regions, but lower labor costs appear to help offset that in some cases…

The continuing labor shortage and wage pressure could eventually raise the costs of Chinese-made exports, which have been a main driver of China’s impressive economic growth...

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