Research On Chinese Employment From Technology Progress Viewpoint

Technological progress is sure to immensely boost labor productivity, facilitate great stride in development of productive forces as well as rapid growth of economy. Yet the problem that follows is the relation between technological progress and employment. Thus"technological progress & employment"has become an unavoidable issue in modern human society. What on earth is the relation between the two? It has aroused extensive concerns and discussions among theoreticians and practitioners.Currently viewpoints held by the academic circle and practitioners with regard to this subject can be concluded to be the following 4: first is the theory of promotion, which is that technological progress shall have positive effect on promoting employment. A second one is the theory of suppression, which believes that technological progress, while increasing labor productivity, lowering requirement of labor forces, incurring the phenomenon of"machines elbowing out workers"on one hand, causes decline of traditional industries and emergence of newly-rising sections, resulting in structural contradiction as laborers in the traditional sections are technically disqualified for the new ones on the other hand. Consequently unemployment rises and employment decreases. A third one is the dilemma theory. It is maintained that technical progress and increase of employment is a dilemma in that to encourage technical progress means to develop high technology featuring with development of technique-intensive or capital intensive industries. This will lead to vast advance in labor productivity, saving more labor forces, inducing greater stress in employment, so the traditional solution of unemployment is to rely on the relatively abundant and cheap labor resources in China and focus on development of labor-intensive industries with low technical content. This will widen the disparities between China and developed countries. The fourth one is the theory of integration, which deems that the influence of technical progress...