ABSTRACT
A core aspect of the post-Mao reform in China is to induce or allow market-oriented economic behavior from various production units and individuals and institute market-based relations between them. In rural areas, economic institutional decollectivization has made peasants resume individual farming and other private production activities. The economic outcomes of such activities are now determined not just by parameters set by the state, such as state procurement prices for grain, but increasingly by market situations, that is, the demand and supply of grain, petty-manufactured goods, and personal services both at the local and the national level. In urban areas, strenuous efforts have been made to institute labor market principles into collective and state enterprises. Increasingly, workers are denied political entitlement to permanent employment and instead asked to accept pay cuts, temporary or permanent layoffs, and so forth. However, many adaptive people can now acquire new employment opportunities in various types of private and joint-venture enterprises or initiate their own private ventures.
