This book explores the dynamics of the Chinese labor market, the largest in the world. The sheer scale of rural laborers living in cities is the ultimate engine driving the fastest urbanization the world has ever seen. Today, the country faces a series of new challenges as it tries to address problems of unemployment and under-employment. These include population ageing, automation, the increasing use of AI on the factory floor and other workplaces and Chinese manufacturers’ move up the value chain. The book presents an empirically rich and analytically rigorous account of how these challenges might be met. It will be of interest to labor economists, scholars of Chinese manufacturing, and researchers of the Chinese economy.

Translated by: Simin Tan, Yuanlin Wei