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In 1999, the State Council set forth an urban social assistance program aimed chiefly at pacifying protesting laid-off workers and compensating for the breakdown of the work-unit-based welfare benefits that had obtained under the planned economy. While an initial goal was to ensure the political stability that would allow enterprise reform to proceed unchallenged, over time the content of the scheme shifted in line with new regime goals. First the program spread to the countryside, as the New Socialist Countryside model was installed. In the past few years, in line with a tightening of financial commitment, leaders have demanded that the able-bodied poor should work, not be succoured, and that the program's allowances target the desperate. Also, beginning in 2014 and continuing into 2016 there has been heavy emphasis on fighting graft and corruption in the program. The paper details five alterations that have emerged - or policy slants for which earlier, less extreme changes in implementation have intensified - since Xi Jinping ascended to power. The big message here is that the regime has repeatedly reshaped this initiative to match the changing political agenda of the Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the growth of unemployment in China since the early 1990s. The author provides an analysis how the country's move toward modernization have contributed to the dismissal of disqualified employees in the workplace and assesses the factors that resulted to their termination. He explores that strategies and programs implemented by the government which aim to address the challenges facing the unemployed, such as the establishment of the Reemployment Project and Regulations for the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee for Urban Residents. The author argues that despite the programs an effective labor policy should be developed the government to address the issue.

The article focuses on the comparison of the responses of Chinese workers to the globalization-induced job cuts and benefit reductions with those of workers from France and Mexico. The question of worker activism following economic liberalization and the death of socialist economies has been a favorite topic among researchers. Various studies showed inequality in the actions and outcomes in Russia and China where unions achieved greater autonomy from government. These workers became more demonstrative as the years of economic reform, internationalization and magnetization progressed. The feebleness of unions and the lack of other institutions that could settle on behalf of the distressed workers had driven expression on the streets in defense of what they considered important.

Discusses some of the problems in analyzing unemployment in China. Use of a broad array of differentiating labels for laid-off people; Unemployment rate in state-owned firms; Problems with unemployment studies conducted by the government.