Understanding China and Vietnam’s market socialist transformation
Known as the ‘factories of the world’, China and Vietnam have experienced drastic changes since their respective reforms around the 1980s. Singly ruled by Communist parties, these countries have been undergoing capitalist transformations that have completely changed how ordinary people live and work and how the economy is organised. “Economic growth, rapid industrialisation and urbanisation have ushered in entirely new landscapes of production, consumption and mobility – all of which are creating both new opportunities and new challenges for these countries,” says Minh Nguyen, professor of Social Anthropology at Bielefeld University(opens in new window). One of those challenges is the provision of welfare for the hundreds of millions of rural migrant workers, many of whom are employed at the global factories that produce consumer goods for the entire world. With the support of the EU-funded WelfareStruggles project, Nguyen aims to shed some light on how these countries’ governments are addressing such challenges.
Basic welfare programmes leave workers exposed
According to Nguyen, after years of declining social welfare, the Chinese and Vietnamese governments have started pushing ahead with ambitious welfare programmes. “State-provided universal health insurance, pensions and cash transfers have been rapidly expanding,” she explains. However, despite their expansion, these basic welfare programmes only provide a thin layer of social protection for working people. That’s because they are characterised by a strong emphasis on self-responsibility – people are expected to turn to market options for both healthcare and welfare. This leaves the workers exposed to market risks, especially given the increasing flexibility of labour. “The Communist Party’s dual goals of market liberalisation and socialist control have led to welfare systems underpinned by differing and often competing visions of ‘the good life’ and concept of labour,” adds Nguyen.
Changing patterns of labour, mobility and household reproduction
The post-reform industrialisation of China and Vietnam has been enabled by the labour of hundreds of millions of rural migrants. “For decades, millions of rural migrants have had to exist between their place of work and where they and their families live,” notes Nguyen. But this is now starting to change. The project, which received support from the European Research Council(opens in new window), identified major changes to the countries’ labour mobility. For instance, with manufacturing increasingly being relocated away from former industrial heartlands and towards what used to be peripheral rural locations, many workers can now make the daily commute between work and home. “However, the commodification of everything and the loss of agricultural land is imposing greater pressure for cash income to maintain and provide for the family,” adds Nguyen.
Pushing pro-market policies using socialist institutions and rhetoric
Through its research, the project found a preference for flexible and unprotected forms of employment, such as overtime or seasonal work, among factory workers. According to Nguyen, this is due to the workers’ need for cash, general distrust of existing welfare schemes, and global companies’ manoeuvres to reduce the number of permanent workers. “Sponsored by their party states, China and Vietnam’s deepening market transformations are shaping the lives of workers and their welfare in new ways,” concludes Nguyen. Many of the project’s results have been published in highly reputable journals, presented at global conferences and translated into a policy brief series.
Keywords
WelfareStruggles, China, Vietnam, market transformation, welfare, social welfare, capitalist, migrant workers, labour, socialist