The Economic Background of Chinese Management

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine the economic changes which have shaped the development of management and its training in China over the last decade. First, we briefly look at the demographic changes in the PRC; then second, we discuss the main economic trends over the period, highlighting the economic reforms taking place in the industrial sector. Last, we draw some conclusions vis-à-vis the managerial training needs of the economy. Providing for China’s burgeoning numbers has become increasingly problematic. If in 1980 four out of five people had been country-folk, by 1986 over one in three were described as ‘urbanised’, according to the State Statistical Bureau (cited in Gittings, 1989, p. 4), although this may have been an overstatement. Out of a total population of over one billion, nearly 400 million people lived in or near townships and cities nonetheless, with food consumers growing at the expense of food producers. If the Party ideology had originally reflected the peasant character of the revolution, it later had to balance this with concern for the urban industrial worker, the vanguard of which was concentrated in state-owned enterprises.