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51 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1936)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry51 and id is 1 raw text is: March 1936 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY MAN-POWER IN CHINA II* Availability of the Labor Supply THERE has been a common misconception that China, because of the low standard of living, had no serious unemployment problem. The theory was that the people were willing to work at any sort of task for the lowest kind of pay and were, therefore, absorbed in some sort of occupation. The misconception has grown because China's un- employment is not concentrated and does not manifest itself, as it does under an industrial economy, in long lines of men and women asking for relief. Because the national economy is primarily agricultural, unemployment is spread out over the entire country; and because of the household system in industry and the family system in agriculture, it is not self-evident; but China has an appalling amount of unemployment and under- employment. The very fact that people do work for what amounts to a bare subsistence, that slavery and contract labor continue, that emigration is imperative and that there are bandit hordes and agricultural unrest, are evidences of the colossal proportions of the problem. The industrial unemploy- ment that has come with the world depression is only a small part of that problem, although it has become very acute with the closing of silk filatures, cotton factories and flour mills in China and the return of hundreds of thousands of overseas Chinese from the mines and plantations of Malaya, Nether- lands India, and Indo-China. * The first part of this article was published in THE POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY for December 1935. Volume LI] [ Number i I