| With the depletion of China’s resource-based input factors,the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend and the requirements of the "Made in China 2025" strategy,the current "high-quality development" of China’s economy urgently requires technological innovation,coinciding with a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation with artificial intelligence and data science as the main driving technology,and innovative achievements in the field of artificial intelligence emerge one after another,which has a subversive impact on the scale and structure of China’s economic structure,industrial organization mode and labor market supply and demand.In July 2017,the State Council issued the "New Generation Development Plan",which laid out the strategic goal of China’s new generation artificial intelligence development and aims to become a major artificial intelligence innovation center in the world by 2030.the competitiveness of the artificial intelligence industry should reach the world’s leading level.Under the promotion of the government and in order to alleviate employment problems and improve product competitiveness,Chinese enterprises have accelerated the deployment of intelligent industries and industrial robots.Artificial intelligence has become a key field of scientific and technological innovation and an important pillar of the digital economy era,which has had a profound impact on the social economy,especially raising concerns about the job-destroying effects of "machine substitution"and "technological unemployment" caused by artificial intelligence.The increasingly mature machine automation technology has begun to replace labor in manufacturing production,which may trigger the spatial reconfiguration of labor factors and promote the emergence of a new labor market equilibrium.In the context of the extensive use of emerging automated production technologies to replace labor in the manufacturing industry,has the advancement of industrial robot technology changed the spatial allocation of labor factors in China?Can the rapid development of machine automation technology change the impact of skills demand and labor productivity factors on labor migration?What is the influence mechanism behind it?The answers to these questions are of enlightenment significance for grasping the healthy development of China’s labor market.Using the 2005-2015 census data and the International Federation of Robotics(IFR)database,this paper demonstrates the law of labor flow in space under the background of machine automation from the urban level,and provides a new perspective for explaining labor mobility in China.The results show that:(1)The application of industrial robots significantly reduces the migration of regional foreign labor,and this negative effect is mainly reflected in the migration of medium-skilled foreign labor,and the inflow of high-skilled foreign labor is a significant positive effect,while there is no significant impact on the influx of low-skilled foreign labor.(2)The heterogeneity analysis results show that when the scale of industrial robot application in a city is larger,the impact on the labor market is more significant,thereby significantly inhibiting the migration of foreign labor;Compared with cities with low trade openness,industrial robots have a greater negative effect on the migration rate of foreign household registration labor in cities with high trade openness,mainly dominated by the significant reduction of the migration rate of middle-skilled labor,whether in cities with high trade openness or low trade openness,the application of industrial robots significantly promotes the migration rate of high-skilled labor;Only in areas with relatively large manufacturing scale,the application of industrial robots will have a negative effect on the migration rate of foreign household registration labor,and in areas with small manufacturing scale,this effect is not obvious;Compared with other regions,the eastern region,which is the most powerful manufacturing center in China.has a negative impact on the overall labor migration rate,while the western region and the central region have a positive impact,while the northeast region has no significant impact on the labor migration rate.(3)The mechanism analysis shows that the application of industrial robots explains the phenomenon of labor migration of skill heterogeneity through the labor skill demand channel.In addition,the application of industrial robots inhibits the migration of foreign labor by suppressing the labor productivity of the city as a whole.In order to cope with the trend of "machine substitution" of industrial robot substitution,promote the optimal allocation of labor factors,and achieve the equilibrium state of China’s labor market,combined with the above analysis conclusions,this paper puts forward corresponding policy suggestions from the aspects of industrial development policy,regional overall development and improvement of talent training system. |
