ABSTRACT
Western theories based on experiences of the US and other developed countries have suggested that as economies develop, labor markets shifts not only from primary (agriculture) to secondary (manufacturing) and then tertiary (services) sector, but also from low-order to high-order services (Fisher 1939; Clark 1940; Fuchs 1968; Bell 1973; Inman 1985; Riddle 1986). This sectoral labor transition has not been replicated in many developing countries (Pandit and Casetti 1989) because of the lack of industrialization. Previous studies (Gong 2002a; Lin 2003) on China have found that unlike these developing countries, China followed a similar path of sectoral labor transition in developed countries from primary to secondary and then to tertiary sector. As the country is becoming more industrialized, is China providing the producer services to serve this process and experiencing the labor transition from low-order to high-order services? Where are these high-order producer services developing, and why? We address these questions in this study.
