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I'm currently reading Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History and the origins are the following: * Initially they had a huge amount of prisoners and shortage of work

I'm currently reading Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History and the origins are the following: * Initially they had a huge amount of prisoners and shortage of workers in key regions. Naturally they had them work in remote areas. * The real motivation is economic - the central planners simply loved the flexibility of slave labor - they could start pet projects quickly. They wanted to complete vanity projects that made no economic sense like the Belomorcanal. Their need for hard currency also meant that they needed raw resources for export, most of which were in faraway, underdeveloped regions. * Repressive organs found that they were strongly incentivised to send even more people to the camps. * There was obviously no free media - which meant that any excess was covered up or spun as success - for example Gorky acknowledged that prisoners don't have the proper skills or tools, but somehow claimed that ideology and superb management created wonders. This eventually emboldened the government to enslave even more people. In short they created a slave economy. It wasn't by design, in so far that the leaders of the country didn't explicitly wish the return of slavery and serfdom, but there was a spiral of reinforcing incentives in the system. Just like the USSR of the 20s and 30s China is desperate to create economic growth at all costs, will eventually run out of cheap rural labor[0], on which it used to rely for the last few decades and is not beholden to either national or international opinion. Who can stop the CPC from reintroducing slavery or serfdom? The Gulag system developed over 10 years to reach it its classical form, we may well see the first steps. Economist Evsey Domar famously created a model where high labour demand and lots of available land creates incentives for landowners to reintroduce serfdom [1] as they didn't want to compete with each other. Is China's capital being accustomed to cheap labourers migrating from poor rural areas the reason why rural minorities are now forced into labour by the government? [0]: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/rural-population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html https://tradingeconomics.com/china/rural-population-percent-... - this is the total rural population, but I assume eventually many of the remaining people will be old or average-off Han that like it in the villages. [1]: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/63299/causesofslaveryh00doma.pdf?sequence=1&origin=publication_detail https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/63299/causeso...

dirtyid 6y ago
>will eventually run out of cheap rural labor Premier Li KeQiang revealed this year over 600m Chinese still live on 1000RMB a month. China will _never_ run out of cheap labour. The reality is, even at the height of Chinese export economy 10 years ago, manufacturing "only" employed ~400M workers. China has more cheap work force than _global_ demand. These poverty alleviation / sinicization programs are just that. They're trying to reign in minorities in frontier regions with separatism risk. The vocational training salaries compensates better than the aforementioned 600m on 1000RMB per month. The mass of Han rural poor looking for migrant work opportunities would riot if they found out how much minorities are "privileged" in these programs. Many are already pissed at the affirmative action privileges afforded to minorities in many facets of life.
- dimitar 6y ago
  The margins are razor thin and cheap is relative. Chinese manufacturers are used to paying close to nothing and now there is wage pressure. https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/04/what-worries-chinas-manufacturers-more-us-tariffs-labor-shortage/ https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/04/what-worries-chinas-m... Also, in textile manufacturing for example you can see that firms are already moving away from China to places like Bangladesh.. unless they are using Uyghur labor. Regarding the rural population - Chinese agriculture is extremely inefficient and still needs huge amount of labour - the reason is that the large agricultural enterprises are in effect limited to family businesses by law. If they actually reform agriculture China will have no issues feeding itself cheaply, but it probably will not as it will be a huge social disruption.
  - dirtyid 6y ago
    1000RMB per month is currently competitive with ASEAN wages like Vietnam, problem is lack of focus on interior development until recently. Coastal manufactures with 2000RMB wages were shifting to Vietnam due to lack of interior development and US tariffs. Push comes to shove, interior supply chain will be preferenced if policy pressure dictates holding on the domestic manufacturing. Won't stop foreign companies who wants to diversify supply chains though, but would also influence underlying economics of domestic companies moving. As for work force, China has abundance of cheap labour that's still regionally competitive. Official CCP poverty definition (lower than world bank) is 250RMB/month. Incidentally why Xi's poverty alleviation by 2020 is a meme. There's still 600M Chinese who'll work for 250-1000RMB. That's still multiple medium sized countries worth of "close to nothing" tier labour, competitive from Bangladesh to Vietnam. Real problem is social disruption from outsourcing from coastal to interior provinces, China dealing with coastal rust belt is going to be interesting. Hence new duo circulation / domestic consumption strategy which may or may not pan out. >unless they are using Uyghur labor Vocational training covers many sectors not just textiles, and no report alleges these are cheap / unpaid positions, merely forced. Lowest wage for out of province contracts works out to be 2000RMB with state subsidies to companies. Obviously not sustainable for 600M+ Han, but can swing it for "only" 11M Uyghurs because underlying concern is security not cheap labour. I see it like TSA funding, it doesn't make economic sense on it's own, at best it stops a few attacks, at worst it's wasted security theatre. It's "cheap labour" in the sense that state provides subsidies for companies taking on Uyghur workers, but ultimately not sustainable or efficient use of resources. Frame another way, it's also similar to US agriculture industrial policy, subsidize farmers because it makes political sense foremost and some economic sense in that it provides domestic industries some protectionist barriers even though on net it's bad use of resources. >Chinese ag They're actually moving towards US style industrial farms for efficiency and improved food security. Rural collectives from land reform legacy is being phased out for some sort of share system with prospectvie big state Ag companies. Will definitely cause social disruption but also long overdue. IMO previous reluctance probably because land reform central to CCP origin story, pretty embarrassing that replacement for CCP core policy = more capitalism.

dirtyid 6y ago

>will eventually run out of cheap rural labor Premier Li KeQiang revealed this year over 600m Chinese still live on 1000RMB a month. China will _never_ run out of cheap labour. The reality is, even at the height of Chinese export economy 10 years ago, manufacturing "only" employed ~400M workers. China has more cheap work force than _global_ demand. These poverty alleviation / sinicization programs are just that. They're trying to reign in minorities in frontier regions with separatism risk. The vocational training salaries compensates better than the aforementioned 600m on 1000RMB per month. The mass of Han rural poor looking for migrant work opportunities would riot if they found out how much minorities are "privileged" in these programs. Many are already pissed at the affirmative action privileges afforded to minorities in many facets of life.

dimitar 6y ago
The margins are razor thin and cheap is relative. Chinese manufacturers are used to paying close to nothing and now there is wage pressure. https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/04/what-worries-chinas-manufacturers-more-us-tariffs-labor-shortage/ https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/04/what-worries-chinas-m... Also, in textile manufacturing for example you can see that firms are already moving away from China to places like Bangladesh.. unless they are using Uyghur labor. Regarding the rural population - Chinese agriculture is extremely inefficient and still needs huge amount of labour - the reason is that the large agricultural enterprises are in effect limited to family businesses by law. If they actually reform agriculture China will have no issues feeding itself cheaply, but it probably will not as it will be a huge social disruption.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  1000RMB per month is currently competitive with ASEAN wages like Vietnam, problem is lack of focus on interior development until recently. Coastal manufactures with 2000RMB wages were shifting to Vietnam due to lack of interior development and US tariffs. Push comes to shove, interior supply chain will be preferenced if policy pressure dictates holding on the domestic manufacturing. Won't stop foreign companies who wants to diversify supply chains though, but would also influence underlying economics of domestic companies moving. As for work force, China has abundance of cheap labour that's still regionally competitive. Official CCP poverty definition (lower than world bank) is 250RMB/month. Incidentally why Xi's poverty alleviation by 2020 is a meme. There's still 600M Chinese who'll work for 250-1000RMB. That's still multiple medium sized countries worth of "close to nothing" tier labour, competitive from Bangladesh to Vietnam. Real problem is social disruption from outsourcing from coastal to interior provinces, China dealing with coastal rust belt is going to be interesting. Hence new duo circulation / domestic consumption strategy which may or may not pan out. >unless they are using Uyghur labor Vocational training covers many sectors not just textiles, and no report alleges these are cheap / unpaid positions, merely forced. Lowest wage for out of province contracts works out to be 2000RMB with state subsidies to companies. Obviously not sustainable for 600M+ Han, but can swing it for "only" 11M Uyghurs because underlying concern is security not cheap labour. I see it like TSA funding, it doesn't make economic sense on it's own, at best it stops a few attacks, at worst it's wasted security theatre. It's "cheap labour" in the sense that state provides subsidies for companies taking on Uyghur workers, but ultimately not sustainable or efficient use of resources. Frame another way, it's also similar to US agriculture industrial policy, subsidize farmers because it makes political sense foremost and some economic sense in that it provides domestic industries some protectionist barriers even though on net it's bad use of resources. >Chinese ag They're actually moving towards US style industrial farms for efficiency and improved food security. Rural collectives from land reform legacy is being phased out for some sort of share system with prospectvie big state Ag companies. Will definitely cause social disruption but also long overdue. IMO previous reluctance probably because land reform central to CCP origin story, pretty embarrassing that replacement for CCP core policy = more capitalism.