ABSTRACT
China’s economic reform process which Deng Xiaoping initiated in the late 1970s seeks to develop an internationally integrated market economy without substantially restructuring the political system. Both domestic and international pressures precipitated China’s economic reform process, beginning tentatively in the late 1970s and accelerating through to the nineties when its objective became the creation of a “socialist market economy.” The economic reforms have focused on reducing central administrative control and planning and the implementation of effective market relations in various sectors of the economy. The future of China’s socialist market economy will be profoundly influenced by the government’s ability to manage the political consequences of its labor reforms. In urban areas there were major reforms to the industrial centerpiece of Chinese socialism— the state owned enterprises. The re-integration of the Chinese economy with that of the rest of the world has been of major labor market significance both within and outside China.
