Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular.

The paper uses the Lewis model as a framework for examining the labour market progress of two labour-abundant countries, China and South Africa, towards labour shortage and generally rising labour real incomes. In the acuteness of their rural-urban divides, forms of migrant labour, rapid...

In China urban residents have traditionally been protected against labour marketcompetition from rural-urban migrants. Over the period of urban economic reform, rural-urbanmigration was allowed to increase in order to fill the employment gap as growth of labourdemand outstripped that of the...

Social capital is thought to play an economic role in the labour market. It may beparticularly pertinent in one that is in transition from an administered to a market-orientedsystem. One factor that may determine success in the underdeveloped Chinese labourmarket is thus guanxi, the Chinese...