60 People, 60 Stories

Choosing the path less familiar

By Dr Nick Land (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-30 08:27

It is usually accepted without much argument that economic growth is a good thing to have, but it is always dislocating. If people are to become more productive, which is the only sustainable way they can improve their living standards, then they have to change the way they work and, quite often, the kind of work they do.

In a stagnant or near-stagnant society, the shape of careers remains unchanged across working lives and even across generations. In a fast-growing society, one's own career path becomes unpredictable, while the employment opportunities available to one's children are simply unimaginable. It can be stated as a reliable rule, therefore, that the more dynamic a society becomes, the greater the uncertainty clouding its future and the higher the potential for anxiety about the paths life might take.

China's growth rate since the beginning of its reform and opening up in 1979 has been historically unprecedented, so it is not surprising that for many millions of people, life-patterns have been disrupted unexpectedly and often shockingly. Predictable (and comparatively menial) labor in vast nurturing work units has steadily given way to the wide - and wild - horizons of the market economy, where the distribution of risks and rewards is unfamiliar and, to many, disconcerting.

Yet, on balance, the rewards clearly outweigh the risks, as China's rapidly rising living standards demonstrate. Old jobs are disappearing, but those replacing them tend to be safer, more stimulating and better compensated, offering employees greater freedom to select and shape careers, develop capabilities, express creativity and deploy social skills. Social uncertainty can often be uncomfortable, and in some unfortunate cases close to tragic, but in the final analysis it is an inextricable part of development and for that reason far preferable to the alternative.

Dr Nick Land, a professor at Warwick University, has worked in China since 2000.