

China: A Billion Strong but Short on Workers - jseliger
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323798104578455153999658318.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

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adventured
China does not have a labor shortage, they have a problem with intentionally
backwards government controlled farming.

China has retarded the progress of their farming industry on purpose to
basically give hundreds of millions of workers something to do.

If Chinese farming matched the productivity of US farming, China would need to
find something for a quarter of a billion people to do.

The US has 300 million people, with 2 million legal farm workers (and upwards
of 2 to 3 million illegal).

"In 2010, there were 1,202,500 farmers, ranchers and other agricultural
managers and an estimated 757,900 agricultural workers were legally employed
in the US."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States)

America has a substantial food surplus with less than 2% of its people working
in farming. You could remove the illegal immigrant side of the farming
industry, get it down to 1% of the population, and still meet US food needs
(since we export vast quantities of food). Arguably in the near future these
numbers will come down even further, as farming productivity skyrockets with
robotics.

China has at least 300 million people working in farming.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_China>

That's 23% of their population.

Get that down to even just 5%, and they'd need to find jobs for almost a
quarter of a billion people. The highly inefficient farming system in China is
intentional, and that is the problem with their supposed labor shortage.

Here's a good note on the fact that South Korean farms are 40 times more
productive than Chinese:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-farmer-
productivity-2...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-farmer-
productivity-2012-8)

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taopao
Paywalled! Can't read the article. :(

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adventured
Go to Google and type in "China: A Billion Strong but Short on Workers" and
click on the Wall Street Journal story.

They'll let you through the paywall.

~~~
pragmatic
Nope.

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adventured
Worked for me. When I followed the link, I was paywalled out. I commonly use
Google for this with WSJ paywalled articles, always works.

~~~
mcantelon
Worked for me as well.

