Mingqiong Zhang

Which rural migrants receive social insurance in Chinese cities? Evidence from Jiangsu survey data

This article draws on a survey of internal migrant workers in China’s Jiangsu province to shed light on the characteristics of migrant workers who receive social insurance and explain why some migrants take up social insurance while others do not. Of the factors which potentially explain which migrants receive social insurance, gender, past earnings, ties to the city to which the migrant had moved, the ownership type of the enterprise in which the migrant works and residential registration status are all found to be statistically significant predictors. The article concludes with the suggestion that the high level of scepticism with respect to social protection that has been reported as being manifest among migrants is justified. There is little likelihood the majority of migrant workers who have moved to China’s towns and cities will be able to access the social insurance benefits traditionally available to those with urban registration.

Paternalistic and transactional HRM: the nature and transformation of HRM in contemporary China

Drawing on institutionalism and path dependency theory, this paper provides a conceptual framework to identify and explain the nature and transformation of Chinese human resource management (HRM). The framework is applied to case studies of three enterprises that are either state-owned or state-controlled. The paper groups HRM in contemporary China into three categories: Paternalistic; Transactional; and Differentiated with the last one involving a mix of paternalistic and transactional HRM policies and practices. The paper argues that, as Chinas economy has evolved from paternalistic socialism to market socialism in recent decades, Chinese HRM has responded, moving along the continuum from paternalistic to transactional HRM. The case studies reveal the impact on HRM practice of both the legacy of paternalistic socialism and three decades of marketization. The case study evidence clearly indicates that paternalistic HRM, common in state-owned enterprises in the pre-reform era, has evolved towards either transactional or diffe\rentiated HRM. Among the changes in HRM practice is a decline in the welfare benefits and employment security of workers, the former ‘masters of society’.

DETERMINANTS OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AMONG MIGRANT CHILDREN: SURVEY EVIDENCE FROM CHINA'S JIANGSU PROVINCE*

Across the developing world education is seen as a means of raising levels of everyday wellbeing and is being linked to improved measures of productivity and economic growth. This paper employs a household production function framework to examine the determinants of school attendance among migrant children using a unique dataset collected in Chinas Jiangsu province. The study finds that the main predictors of school attendance among migrant children in the sample were household income, mothers education, the length of residence of the childs mother in the city and whether both parents were working in the same city.

Hukou-based HRM in contemporary China: the case of Jiangsu and Shanghai

Based on case studies of 12 firms, this research documents how the hukou-based human resource management (HRM) system in contemporary China informs six human resource management functions. It is shown that the system has generated a division between urbanites as core employees and rural migrants as peripheral workers. Rural workers tend to suffer from job and wage discrimination and have less access to training, welfare benefits, social insurance, and promotion than urban-hukou holders. The hierarchical nature of this division reflects the fact that human resource management policy and practice in China is a product of the larger institutional environment and lends support to the theoretical notion of ‘socially embedded HRM’.

Unemployment Within China's Floating Population: Empirical Evidence from Jiangsu Survey Data

Ingrid Nielsen, Department of Management, Monash University; Russell Smyth, Department of Economics, Monash University; and Mingqiong Zhang, Committee of Development and Reform, Jiangsu Provincial Government, China. This project was supported by a grant from the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements. The authors thank Xin Deng and Joanna Nikopoulos for research assistance. INGRID NIELSEN, RUSSELL SMYTH, AND MINGQIONG ZHANG

Migrants as Homo economicus : Explaining the emerging phenomenon of a shortage of migrant labor in China's coastal provinces

The problem of a shortage of migrant labor is a new development in Chinas coastal provinces. We discuss the reasons for this emerging phenomenon using a conceptual framework that extends the traditional Lewis dualistic labor market model to incorporate a migrant labor market. We emphasize that migrant labor shortage in China not only reflects a declining wage gap between what peasants receive and what migrants can earn in the cities, but also the institutional legacies of the planning era such as the hukou (household registration) system which discriminates against migrants vis-a-vis urban residents in terms of access to social insurance and other social services. We proceed to draw on a unique survey of migrants and urban residents collected in Jiangsu to show that migrants receive lower incomes, and they have poorer access to social insurance than those with an urban registration in Chinas cities. Our findings have important implications for the alleviation of the migrant labor shortage problem.