Productivity and labor management

Since 1979, the Chinese government has introduced into the economic system sweeping reforms designed to bring the Chinese economy back on the road to modernization. Despite official discourse, the system of planned economy that had prevailed during the past three decades had almost completely stifled its capacity for growth and innovation1. When the high tide of “ Politics in command ” finally receded, Chinese statisticians and economists were able to get back to work and draw a more realistic picture of the state of national industries. It became clear to the Chinese leaders that their past policies of increasingly massive investments had not generated a proportional growth of production2. Worse, the productivity of workers had hardly increased3. The general lines of economic reform in China are well known4. In the field of urban economy to which industries belong, the major measures that were implemented were:- the scrapping down of plannification for industrial products, except for those of strategic importance;- the reform of prices which entailed, first, a relaxation of government control until the late 1980s, then an almost complete reliance on market relations;- the reform of enterprise management designed to reduce the role of politics, to give more autonomy to managers, and to make enterprises responsible for their accounts. The fundamental rationale of the reforms was to transfer to enterprises the power to decide o