Overcapacity Dilemma

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Overcapacity Dilemma

The Beijing News March 1

According to Yin Weimin, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, three factors will pose big challenges to employment in 2016: the releasing of workers from certain industries suffering from overcapacity; heavy pressures on the economy; and roughly 7.6 million new graduates from college.

During the transitional period of an economy, rising industries demand a bigger labor force, while sunset industries need to get rid of redundant workers.As a result, unemployment and vacancies appear at the same time.Why is the structural unemployment occurring today becoming an obstacle to the resolving of overcapacity? The key is that this round of unemployment largely involves the laying off of workers in stateowned enterprises (SOEs).

Overcapacity is nowadays concentrated on heavy industries like coal as well as iron and steel, mainly large SOEs, which ensure an “iron rice bowl” for their staff.When these industries are gradually squeezed out by the market, even the “iron rice bowls” will have to be broken.

China saw large-scale layoffs happening to SOEs in the late 1990s.It was later found out that the free movement of labor was an important factor that supported China’s economic boom in the following two decades.

Today, when the market already has effective labor circulation channels, redirecting laid-off SOE workers, so that they can get reemployed in suitable positions, will not be more difficult than it was in the 1990s.Market-oriented reforms in SOEs should not halt for fear of a new wave of layoffs.

DOCTOR GROWS VEGETABLES AT SOUTH POLE

Wang Zheng, an orthopedist from east China’s Jiangxi Province, has successfully grown vegetables at the South Pole.

During his over-400-day tenure at Zhongshan, one of China’s four Antarctic research stations, Wang was tasked with exploring the possibility of growing fresh vegetables, in addition to being a physician.Previously, teams based at all these stations had to solely rely on food deliveries from the icebreaker Xue Long.A one-way trip takes 75 days.The only vegetables that the teams could eat were therefore dehydrated.

Wang used a specialized hydroponics system developed by a Shanghaibased polar research center to grow plants in the extreme conditions.The lettuce, cucumber, tomato and Chinese cabbage grown by Wang yielded a good harvest.

Wang said he had to warm the greenhouse by burning oil in order to withstand Antarctica’s extremely cold temperatures.Nonetheless, the amount of energy consumed was still much less than that of the Xue Long.