Böcker av Dorothy J. Solinger

This groundbreaking book powerfully humanizes the little-known urban workers who have been left behind in Chinäs single-minded drive to modernize. Dorothy Solinger traces the origins of their plight to the mid-1990s, when the Chinese government found that state-owned factories were failing in large numbers in the face of market reforms just as the country was about to enter the World Trade Organization. Under these circumstances, leaders urged firms to lay off tens of millions of previously lifetime-employed, welfare-secure, under-educated, middle-aged employees. As these dislocated people were left without any source of livelihood, the regime settled on a tiny welfare effort, the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (dibao), to provide some support and, most important from the viewpoint of the leadership, to keep them quiet so that enterprise reform could proceed peacefully. Solinger explores the induced urban poverty that resulted and relates the painful struggle for survival of these discarded laborers. She also details the history and workings of the dibao and its missteps, as well as changes in policy over time. Drawing on dozens of interviews, this book brings to life the urban workers who have been relegated to obsolescence, isolation, and invisibility by Chinäs quest for modernity.

This groundbreaking book explores China's Minimum Livelihood Guarantee program, which was extended in the hopes of quieting the protests of millions of laid-off workers. Solinger replays the duet that unfolded between the state and the ranks of the proletariat and documents the progressively more silent drama as workers have struggled to survive.

Post-Mao market reforms in China have led to a massive migration of rural peasants toward the cities. This title challenges the notion that markets necessarily promote rights and legal equality in any direct or linear fashion.

These essays address the industrial, commercial, urban and regional reforms of China's planned economy during the 1980s. The emphasis is on the dominating institutional and bureaucratic presence of the state even as it sought to loosen the pre-1979 vertically structured command system.