The Cellphone Proletariat Revisited

The New York Times is visiting an issue that I came face to face with five years ago when I was teaching in Zhengzhou. Specifically, they are looking at the fact that college graduates, on average, early barely more than migrant laborers. Incidentally, the major arguments of their four commentators: a manufacturing heavy, export-oriented market; test-oriented, one-size-fits-all education; and a large gap between the top schools and the rest. One factor mentioned that I had not thought of is the demographic shift that is causing lots of older workers to retire from the blue-collar sector, leading to more openings there than in the thin management class. Altogether, I am rather impressed by my own analysis of five years ago (if not my spelling), although I think I focused somewhat too heavily on the political prospects of the cell-phone proletarians.

My perspective five years on is largely on the overwhelming importance of demographics and regional differentiation. My students observed to me back then that there were good jobs available in the west of China, which was and is the major growth area. Nonetheless, the tendency was for them to either remain in Zhengzhou, or to go to coastal cities like Shenzhen, Ningbo, Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin. These are precisely the areas that have the oldest and most long-standing development, and are therefore faced with a glut of skilled labor while simultaneously facing the retirement of their blue-collar workforce. The relative unwillingness of young workers to go West is continuing to feed the sharp distinction between Xinjiang, where opportunities abound, and the coast, where they are limited.

At the same time, the population bulge caused by the post-war baby boom and subsequent sharp reduction of births under the One Child Policy means that there are substantial generational effects visible in the job market. The lack of managerial opportunity is to some degree a reflection of China's policy decision to continue to promote manufacturing. But the small income gap between educated and uneducated labor is large part a reflection of the growing demand for blue-collar workers caused by the retirement of large numbers of the sixties and seventies generations, who found work when heavy industry was the overwhelming emphasis of government policy.

It seems to me that many of America's economic problems are similar generation effects. It is a known issue that the differed benefits offered to labor unions in the fifties and sixties are part of the failure of American manufacturing as these commitments come to term. It is also worth noting that many issues came to a political head in America when they affected the white-collar middle class. In America, as elsewhere, the decline of manufacturing (and its outsourcing) led to a movement to white-collar labor, construction and service; it was only when Americans discovered that low-skill white-collar labor could be outsourced that it began to be a political issue.

I have grown too cautious to make predictions, only observations. Nonetheless, fun to revisit an old concern of mine.