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Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
03-02-2017, 12:41 PM
China to cut 500,000 steel and coal jobs this year
[AFP]
AFPMarch 1, 2017
China makes more than half the world's steel
China makes more than half the world's steel (AFP Photo/)

China said Wednesday it will cut 500,000 jobs in the steel and coal industries this year as it continues to trim excess capacity in the smokestack sectors amid a slowing economy.

Minister of Human Resources Yin Weimin, in announcing the cuts at a press conference in Beijing, said the laid-off workers will enter a job placement programme or be offered early retirement.

China makes more than half the world's steel, but an economic slowdown and sagging global demand has left the industry with massive overcapacity.

The government last year announced plans to eliminate a total of 1.8 million steel and coal jobs. It cut about 726,000 such positions in 2016.

"The whole process was smooth and orderly," Yin said of last year's cuts.

"There were no major conflicts or issues."

Efforts to trim China's industrial workforce have however, provoked some protests in the past by workers.

Last April hundreds of steelworkers protested after losing their jobs in northern Hebei province.

Previous bouts of unemployment in China have been cushioned by a large agricultural sector to which migrant workers can return, but breakneck urbanisation has swallowed swathes of farmland over the last decade.

Beijing has said it wants to reorient the economy away from relying on debt-fuelled investment and towards a consumer-driven model while slimming down the industrial sector, but the transition has proven challenging.

The economy grew by 6.7 percent last year -- the slowest rate in a quarter of a century.

How many of those jobs will return back to USA.
Seems Trump has already caused more foreign jobs to start heading back inside our nation's borders.
Great- bring jobs back, kick illegals out- a perfect recipe! -Tyr

Balu
03-02-2017, 12:58 PM
How many of those jobs will return back to USA.
Seems Trump has already caused more foreign jobs to start heading back inside our nation's borders.
Great- bring jobs back, kick illegals out- a perfect recipe! -Tyr
I wonder if there be a direct relation between a cut of 500,000 jobs and the decrease of production of steel in tons. In China the manufacturing costs are much lower comparing to those of their competitors.
Besides the coal is to be substituted by Russian natural gas in some fields, for example in power plants. So, the subject is not so simple as it may seem. (IMHO)

Elessar
03-02-2017, 03:37 PM
I have wait and see what the backlash to the USA will be, not just in the jobs, either.

Last time there was a huge move in China, the one to slow population growth by limiting the
number of children to one per family, there was a massive attempt at migration to the USA
and Canada. Not sure about Australia.