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【原文标题】China’s workforce is expected to start shrinking in next few years
【中文标题】中国劳动力的发展趋势
【登载媒体】华盛顿邮报
【来源地址】http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/chinas-workforce-is-expected-to-start-shrinking-in-next-few-years/2011/05/02/AGrVKmFH_story.html
【译 者】大梨
【翻译方式】 人工
【声 明】 本翻译供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，不得转载。
【译 文】
中国庞大的劳动力促进了中国经济的迅速发展，崛起成为了一个拥有经济核心力量的国家。中国企业循环无尽的使用着这些廉价劳动力，即使住在厂房里，拿着较低的工资，他们也愿意背井离乡来打工。
而现在这种现象正在转变，中国的廉价劳动力已经逐渐变得不廉价，这样就加剧了中国和美国之间的经济竞争，根据人口统计学家和最近公布的人口普查数据，中国的劳动年龄人口大小已趋于稳定，并将在未来五年的某个时候开始变小。年龄在20到24岁之间的年轻人，是初级工人和工厂劳动力的主要来源。从总体比重来说，这部分年轻人对劳动力人口下降起到了领先的作用。
正因为人口结构的变化，引领了较高薪资、通货膨胀和改造该国的社会结构等变化—尤其是在像北京南边的农村山庄，在那里的成年人几乎已经全都逃避到了大的城市。如果他们有孩子，他们就会把孩子接到城里一起生活，如果没有，他们就只是逢年过节回家看看父母。
这一转变也促使了国家推动了发展技术和创新驱动产业，这种产业并不需要很多的工人，但这也是美国的一个传统优势产业，代替了过去30年来中国的廉价劳动力，而美国企业和政府官员正在面对的是一个人口停滞不前，日益昂贵的物价和难以竞争的国家。
“中国是一个在与时间赛跑的国家”，美国商会写信给中国新兴经济政策研究所说道。中国在竭力发展这样一种经济：一小部分高产的工人能够养活一大群退休者。“在这个国家还没有成熟之前，还不能富起来”，报告说。
中国利用权力来支持推动如生物技术，电信学和新能源这样的行业。这些行业都是美国企业和政府官员所主要关注的产业。中国的低汇率可以说是对美国经济利益一个更直接的威胁。在听证会和外交会议上，美国官员和立法者都集中于关注中国的政策——禁止某种类型的美国技术公司，削弱其他国家补贴目和力争发展中国在行业上的竞争对手，如商用飞机制造业目前就支持了成千上万的美国作业。
对一个经济体系来讲这是一个必然的阶段，在已经过去四分之一的世纪里迅速工业化，主要生产的是其他人安排好要生产的产品，以“中国价格”来震撼世界。据人口统计数据资料显示，现在正在紧迫的改善因为国家长期严格控制人口而带来的后果。政府对中国30岁左右的家庭实行计划生育政策，限制大多数夫妻只能生一个孩子，这个限制对政府其实打击很大，然后迅速增长的老年人口，导致了中国可能无法供养和支持，这一点是政府官员们所担忧的。
在第一代独生子女政策出生下的孩子们如今已经接近了中年，受到这政策的影响，也提供了更清晰的认识，而结果“令人担忧的”，王峰（音译）如是说。王峰——人口统计学家、布鲁金斯—国家政策清华中心主任。
他的新数据表明，在过去十年里总人口增长速度超过预期，每年以百分之0.57的增长率。王表示，每个妇女目前的生育率超过了百分之1.5，跻身于世界最低，大大低于每名妇女所生育的百分之2.1的替代率。据目前2029年的预测，当达到近乎14.5亿中国人口高峰的时候，这将会推进小数点的位置，他说。而在此之后，人口将会下降。
中国目前大约有13亿人口。在过去的10年里，14岁以下的人数减少了超过三分之一，而60岁以上人数增长了百分之二十。
这个人口统计的发展势头显示了离开这个劳动力群体的人们要比进入这个劳动力群体的人们多的多，这对于一个民族一个国家的扭转是极端困难的。
处在工作年龄的人数仍有望增长，也许再过5年就会慢慢达到顶峰。美国商会最近对中国研究指出，仍有约2500万的"盈余"工人在农村地区可以进入工厂工作。
但是，大约在4年内，随着制造商继续聘请员工和扩大规模，农村的劳动力储备预计会消失。 特别是在过去两年，工资被急速提升，而无论是大企业还是小企业都在抱怨工人们所提高的要求，以及员工频繁的跳槽，因为他们可以很容易地找到其他工资更高的工作。
如今工业发展已经更多的转移向农村地区，主要从事出口的行业如台湾制造业巨头富士康，正向广西、湖南省转移中，以避免中国沿海发达城市地区劳动力严重短缺和高薪问题。
北京以南的工业城市廊坊，地方当局说他们需要招聘10万个农村工人进厂工作，以满足公司的要求，才能满足一直忙个不停并且逐渐庞大的工业园区。
从一个小村庄的家庭动力学的角度来看，例如十兆人民，显示了国家所面临的约束。
一代人里，例如石清赞（音译），一个75岁的老人，从生产相当大的人口红利的出发点出发，创造了中国工人们的迅速增长，为一个时代的衰退做好了准备。1962年在中国积极应对大饥荒后余波的时候，他回到了农村成为了一个农民，他早在政府实施独生子女政策的之前就已经养育了四个孩子。如今这些孩子们的年龄大概是38岁到48岁之间，而与他们的配偶（八个成年人）只生下了五个孩子。
这里的乡村学校在两年前就已经关闭了。
他年轻的时候，“政府鼓动大家回家帮忙搞农业生产，”他继续说，但现在而是搬到大城市了。“在20年里，这里将不会有人来。”
【原 文】
China’s workforce is expected to start shrinking in next few years
SHIZHAO, CHINA — China’s large labor force has been central to its rise as an economic power, allowing companies to tap a seemingly endless pool of workerswilling to move from their home towns, often live at the factory site and accept comparatively low wages.
In a shift that is intensifying the economic competition between China and the United States, China’s working-age population has plateaued in size and will begin getting smaller sometime in the next five years, according to demographers and recently released census data. The number of 20-to-24-year-olds, a main source of entry-level and factory labor, is already shrinking, the leading edge of an eventual decline in the overall population.
The demographic change is ushering in higher wages and inflation and remaking the country’s social fabric — particularly in rural villages such as this one south of Beijing, where working adults have all but disappeared to major cities. If there are children, they are living with or visiting grandparents.
The shift has also prompted a national push to develop technology- and innovation-driven industries that need fewer workers — industries in which the United States has traditionally held an advantage. Instead of the “cheap” China of the past 30 years, U.S. business and government officials face a country that is demographically stagnant, increasingly expensive and pressing hard to compete.
“China is a country in a race against time,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote in a study of China’s emerging economic policies. As it rushes to develop an economy in which a smaller force of more productive workers can support an explosion of retirees, “the country can’t get rich before it gets old,” the report said.
China’s use of state power and support to boost industries such as biotechnology, telecommunications and alternative energy has become a main concern among U.S. business and government officials — and is arguably a more direct threat to American economic interests than, say, China’s low exchange rate. In hearings and diplomatic meetings, U.S. officials and lawmakers have focused on Chinese policies that have barred top U.S. technology companies from some types of business, undercut others with state subsidies and aimed to develop Chinese competitors in industries such as commercial aircraft manufacturing that currently support tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.
It is a natural step for an economy that has rapidly industrialized over the past quarter-century, largely by producing what others ordered it to produce at a world-beating cost — the “China price.” Demographics, however, are making the change more urgent as the country confronts the long-term consequences of its strict population-control rules. China’s 30-year-old family-planning policy limits most couples to one child, a restriction the government imposed to curb a large and then-rapidly growing population that officials feared the country could not support.
The first generation born under the one-child policy is now approaching middle age, providing a clearer sense of the rule’s impact. The results are “alarming,” said Wang Feng, a demographer and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy in Beijing, after the release of the country’s latest census.
His new data showed that overall population growth slowed more than expected during the past decade, to 0.57 percent annually. Wang said the fertility rate is now fewer than 1.5 births per woman, among the lowest in the world and well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. This will push forward the point when China’s population peaks at around 1.45 billion, he said, currently forecast for 2029. After that, the population will decline.
China currently has around 1.3 billion people. The number under age 14 fell by more than a third in the past decade, while the number over 60 grew by more than 20 percent.
That sort of demographic momentum — with far more people preparing to leave the workforce than are entering it — is extremely difficult for a nation to reverse.
The number of people of working age is still expected to grow, slowly, for perhaps five more years before reaching its peak, and a recent study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in China noted that there are still around 25 million “surplus” workers in rural areas available to move into factory jobs.
But that rural labor pool is expected to disappear in perhaps four years as manufacturers continue to expand and hire. Over the past two years in particular, wages have been rising rapidly, while businesses small and large complain about increasing worker demands and employees who are quick to quit because they can easily find other jobs at better pay.
Industrial development has been shifting toward more rural parts of the country, with major exporters such as Taiwanese manufacturing conglomerate Foxconn moving to Guanxi and Hunan provinces to avoid labor shortages and higher wages in China’s more heavily developed coastal areas.
In the industrial city of Langfang, south of Beijing, local authorities say they need to recruit another 100,000 rural workers into factory jobs to meet the demands of companies at its sprawling industrial park.
The family dynamics in small villages such as Shizhao show the constraints the country is facing.
Within a generation, families such as that of Shi Qingzan, 75, went from producing a sizable “demographic dividend” — creating the workers who manned China’s rapid growth — to setting the stage for an era of decline. Removed to the countryside in 1962 to become a farmer when China was coping with the aftermath of famine, Shi had four children in the years before the one-child policy. Now ages 38 to 48, those children and their spouses — eight adults — have produced just five children.
The village school here closed two years ago.
When he was young, “the government moved everyone back home to help out with agricultural production,” Shi said, but the impetus now is to move to major cities. “In 20 years, there won’t be anyone here.” |
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发表于 2011-6-9 14:19
