00:00This week on Wu Says, we wrap up our three-part series on some of the biggest economic shifts of the 20th century.
00:08We've looked at Poland and Russia, and now the spotlight turns to China.
00:12Here is a segment from Melissa Idris' conversation with Professor Emeritus Dato, Dr Wu Wingtai.
00:20You have, in the agriculture side, there were too many workers.
00:26Okay, 80%.
00:2782% were farmers.
00:30And many of them were underemployed.
00:33You could safely take them out, and the output would not have been declined.
00:39But you don't see them, because China has the whole co-system.
00:44They cannot go and live in the urban areas and be back.
00:48So there was no kind of urbanization migration at that point in time.
00:51So, what happened was, when China integrated the global economy, the world wants cheap shoes, the world wants cheap textiles.
01:02So China opened new factories, and workers came from the countryside to work in these factories.
01:09And because these were surplus workers, agriculture output was not compromised.
01:16So you only had growth.
01:19There was no need to close any heavy industry, to release workers.
01:24There was no need to reform the state enterprises, because the state enterprises only employ 18% of the population.
01:32Whereas the huge growth of the industrial labor force did not come from the state-owned enterprises.
01:39They came from the countryside.
01:43That's amazing.
01:43So, that's the great boom.
01:46They had got all this excess labor that were underemployed.
01:52In fact, there was this famous story when they did the census.
01:56They go to a rural household, and they say, we're going to count people.
02:02And people from the household said, please don't come near.
02:05We'll come out to you one by one.
02:07And people came out one by one to be counted, instead of letting them in.
02:12Do you know why?
02:14They noticed that every one of them was wearing the same pair of pants.
02:19So, things were very poor.
02:21Oh, dear.
02:22Things were very poor.
02:23So, when jobs opened up in these coastal factories started by Hong Kong businessmen making goods for the rest of the world.
02:34So, that's when China became a big exporter.
02:38And with this export, they could buy foreign technology, and foreign technology could upgrade production.
02:46Catch the full conversation on Awani International and across our social media platforms.
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