经济学人：社会主义的工人站在拐点的中国劳动力市场？

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　　6月7日，上海附近的一家橡胶厂闹罢工的工人们与当地警察发生冲突。“橡胶发出的气味让我们难以忍受，” 一位在该厂工作的外来农民工告诉南华早报记者，“但我们得不到一丁点暴露在有毒气体下的补偿。” 同一天，本田的一家消音器和破损配件制造厂也遭遇了工人罢工，而不到一周之前该公司刚刚平息一场纠纷，同意多支付给工人24%的报酬。6月6日，消费电子产业巨头富士康科技集团向公众透露，若工作表现达标，从10月份开始，深圳富士康龙华科技园的员工每月可挣2000元（约合293美元），双倍于此前的基本工资。该集团最近却频频发生广为报道的员工跳楼自杀事件。
　　众所周知，中国素来拥有一支庞大的吃苦耐劳、基础扎实的劳动力大军。但劳动力市场近来发生的一些事件已经开始让人置疑这种传统印象的真实性。今年3月，经济咨询公司GaveKal Dragonomics研究部的Arthur Kroeber指出中国“劳动力过剩将终结”。中国社会科学院人口与劳动经济研究所所长蔡昉三年前就曾预言中国这个13亿人口大国很快将出现劳动力短缺的用工荒。
　　中国劳动力供应仍在上升。根据美国人口普查局去年12月公布的预测，到2015年，中国的工龄人口将从2010年的将近9亿7千7百万升至9亿9千3百万（见左图）。但未来十年进入就业市场的青少年人口（15-24岁）数量将猛跌大约30%。该预测已与2000年度普查及2005年度模拟普查结果进行对照与调和。此项结果不同于2008年9月6日本报文章（“保留未就业大军”）中的计算。该文认为年轻劳动力供应量将在2015年攀至顶峰。
　　中国劳动力的老龄化问题日益严重。多数年纪大的工作者不愿搬到沿海城市的工厂做工。这些沿海地区的工厂目前主要依赖廉价的内陆民工劳动力。据蔡昉计算，目前农村地区约有24%的村民年龄在16-30岁之间，相比之下40到50岁的人只占11%。“多年来，雇主一直都简单地认为中国有无限充足的年轻劳力供给，认为能以相对便宜的价格将其雇佣并且任意解雇。” Kroeber如此写道。
　　这样的假设由来已久。1954年，发展经济学家阿瑟·刘易斯就对亚洲过量的农场工人、码头工和零售业者以及“冲到你面前为你拎包的年轻人”印象颇深。他认为“亚洲最让人难以置信的乃是这块土地上无限充足的劳动力”。反观实行资本主义的沿海一带，许许多多的劳动者过着自给自足的生活。只要行得通，资本主义的领地大可持续延伸，无需提高工资水准：雇主只需在未开发的广袤内陆地区付给工人比所丢弃的废物价值略高的报酬即可。然而经济终将走向拐点。资本主义能渗入一个国家囊括农民、商人、码头工人、行李搬运工等劳动力储备；而充盈一时的中国劳力大军没有任何时候变得像今天一样稀缺。处在这样一个独特拐点，除非涨工资，否则中国经济恐怕不会继续茁壮成长。
　　蔡昉认定中国就业市场已行至“刘易斯拐点”，伴随而来的将是更为激进的工人运动和更大幅度的工资上调。蔡昉及其同事在去年发表的先见之明认为，中国劳动力市场如今所面临的转折点将“为劳动者在劳资谈判中带来更多发言权，劳动者有权投票反对雇主的决定从而对其施加压力。”本田和富士康的员工此前提出的涨工资诉求得到满足，且公司承诺的工资涨幅惊人。包括北京在内的一些城市最近也宣布将最低工资标准调高20%。若工资水平以该涨幅持续增长，中国劳动力市场势必产生重大转变。
　　单纯用地理因素显然不足以解释劳动力市场所发生的复杂变化。流动性较强的年轻就业人口或将有所下降，但仍会高于5年前甚至10年前的水平。此轮婴儿潮也生动地反映了1958-1961年中国广大乡村地区三年自然灾害对人口结构所产生的影响。
　　拐点将至 - 归去来兮？
　　事实上有不少理由置疑中国劳动力市场已到达拐点。瑞银集团经济学家汪涛曾说，此轮工资上调在全球金融危机引发的工资水平冻结期之后紧跟着发生。最近的工资上升本身在很大程度上弥补了工资水平在去年本应享有的上升空间。目前，中国仍有大片待开发地区。如今，尚有大约40%的就业人口留在农业部门，生产率仅相当于其他经济部门的1/6。同时，农业部门就业占总就业人口比例的降幅目前仍然相当缓慢：据经合组织经济部中国及亚洲部主任理查德·赫德及其同事称，中国农业部门就业占全国总就业人口的比例降至25%尚需10年。
　　某国工资水平在该国就业市场出现拐点之前便出现上涨迹象，对此，发展经济学者阿瑟·刘易斯总结出了几点理由。用于维持生计、自给自足的工资水平本身就可能上升。“维持自给自足的生活水准只是个相当保守的传统选择，而传统是会变的。”刘易斯如此指出。由于中国边远地区的生活水平在不断改善，那里的居民通常不太愿意长期离家在外。“很多村民家现在能用上自来水、通了电，村里修了公路，甚至还能上互联网。”投资银行中金公司首席经济学家哈继铭这样说道。一份政府机构所作的返乡农民工调查显示，大约30%的农民工不确定是否还会继续在外奔波，两年前这个比例是24%。
　　刘易斯还指出，资本主义经济体的工资支付水平与经济未开发地区的自给自足的收入水平之间往往保有一定差距。奉行资本主义的沿海地区通常有更多自己自足的劳动者，那里的工作往往要求劳动者使用更多更复杂的技能，没有“沙滩”却只有“礁石”。要让工人们搬走这些“礁石”，企业就得舍得支付额外费用-常以前面提到的有害气体补贴一类的形式。随着中国人口老龄化趋势愈演愈烈，用人单位花在人力上的额外成本很可能还会上升，但这本身并不意味着拐点来临。
　　诚然，拐点终将到来。其到来之时，工资会上涨，投资回报率无疑将受到影响。但正如刘易斯所指出的，劳动力并不是唯一能够大量流动的群体；资本家也可以奔向工人充裕的地方。在不久的将来将会首先看到劳动力密集型厂房逐渐迁往中国内陆，并最终将全部撤离中国，如同日本和台湾早前所经历的。而这大概也是本田和富士康等企业积极在未开发地区建厂的原因所在。

英文原文：
Economics focus
Socialist workers
Is China’s labour market at a turning-point?
Jun 10th 2010
ON JUNE 7th strikers at a rubber factory near Shanghai clashed with Chinese police. “The smell from the rubber is unbearable,” a migrant worker told the South China Morning Post, “but we don’t even get a toxic fumes subsidy.” On the same day Honda suffered a strike in a factory that makes its mufflers and exhaust parts, less than a week after it settled an earlier dispute by offering a 24% pay rise. On June 6th the owner of Foxconn, an electronics-maker, said that workers at its Shenzhen complex could earn 2,000 yuan ($293) a month from October if their work was up to scratch, about double the basic pay it previously offered, following a string of widely publicised suicides.

China is known for its plentiful, pliable workers. But these incidents have cast doubt on that caricature. In March Arthur Kroeber of GaveKal Dragonomics, a consultancy, declared the “end of surplus labour” in China. Three years earlier, Cai Fang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argued that China, a country of 1.3 billion people, would soon run short of workers.
China’s labour supply is still growing. Its working-age population will increase from almost 977m in 2010 to about 993m in 2015, according to projections issued in December by the US census bureau (see left-hand chart). But the number of youngsters (15-24-year-olds) entering the labour force will fall by almost 30% over the next ten years. These projections reconcile the results of a full census in 2000 and a mini-census in 2005. They differ from the calculations reported in this newspaper on September 6th 2008 (“Reserve army of underemployed”), which suggested that the supply of twenty-somethings would not peak until after 2015.
Economics focus: Reserve army of underemployed
Sep 4th 2008The ageing of China’s labour force matters, because older workers are less willing to move to the coastal factories that depend on migrant labour. Mr Cai has calculated that 24% of villagers aged 16-30 migrate, compared with only 11% of those in their 40s. “For years, businesses have simply assumed that China has an unlimited supply of young people who can be had for modest wages and replaced at will,” Mr Kroeber writes.
The assumption goes back a long way. In 1954 Sir Arthur Lewis, a development economist, noted Asia’s overmanned farms, its surfeit of dockworkers and petty traders, and “the young men who rush forward asking to carry your bag”. He concluded that “over the greater part of Asia, labour is unlimited in supply.” Islands of capitalism existed amid a sea of subsistence labour. For as long as that were true, the capitalist enclaves could grow without wages rising: they only had to offer workers a little more than could be scraped together in the vast economic hinterland. But eventually, the economy would reach a turning-point. The capitalist enclaves would reach so deeply into the country’s pool of labour that the remaining supply of farmers, traders, dockworkers and bag-carriers would fall short of demand. At this point, the economy could not grow without wages rising.
Mr Cai believes China has already reached this “Lewisian turning-point” and that its arrival can be seen in more assertive workers and wage rises. As Mr Cai and his colleagues wrote presciently last year, the turn “enhances the labourers’ right to speak in the labourer-employer negotiation because labourers can impose stress on employers through voting with [their] feet.” The pay hikes won by labourers at Honda and Foxconn are unusually big. Some cities, such as Beijing, have announced increases in their minimum wages of up to 20%. If wages continued to rise at this pace, it would mark a hairpin turn in China’s labour market.
Such an abrupt change is hard to explain by demography alone, however. The supply of mobile youngsters may be about to fall but it is still higher than it was five or ten years ago, when the cohort of youngsters was unusually small. This baby bust was a demographic echo of the rural famines that haunted China from 1958 to 1961, reducing the size of the cohort that would have been their parents (see right-hand chart).
Returning point
In fact, there are good reasons to doubt that the turning-point is here. The pay hikes follow a period of wage freezes during the financial crisis, points out Tao Wang of UBS. By themselves, the pay rises mostly make up for ground lost last year. China’s economic hinterland remains vast. About 40% of the country’s labour force remain in agriculture, where their productivity is about one-sixth of its level in the rest of the economy. The share is also falling quite slowly: Richard Herd and his colleagues at the OECD think it will take another decade for it to drop to 25%.
Sir Arthur offered several reasons why wages might rise even before a country reached its turning-point. The “subsistence” wage itself might rise, for example. “The subsistence level is only a conventional idea, and conventions change,” Sir Arthur pointed out. Migrants are less willing to leave home because conditions in China’s hinterland have improved. “‘Home’ now has running water, electricity, highways, even internet access,” says Ha Jiming of CICC, an investment bank. A government survey of returned migrants found that 30% were not sure whether to venture out again, compared with 24% two years ago.
Sir Arthur also pointed out that there was often a gap between the wages paid in the capitalist economy and the subsistence earnings in the hinterland. Where the islands of capitalism met the sea of subsistence labour, there was not a “beach”, but a “cliff”. To tempt workers over that cliff, firms have to pay a premium—fumes subsidies and the like. With the ageing of the Chinese workforce that premium may rise. But again, this does not in itself mark the turning-point.
That moment will come, of course. When it does wages will rise, eroding the return on capital. But as Sir Arthur argued, workers are not the only ones who can migrate. Capitalists can also go to where workers are abundant. First, labour-intensive factories will move inland. Eventually they will depart China altogether, just as they left Japan and Taiwan before it. That, after all, is why Honda and Foxconn opened plants there in the first place.
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