China’s labor market is undergoing structural changes, with a shrinking labor force and rising labor costs. Young people are reluctant to enter factories, and the international labor market is shifting to Southeast Asia and other places. Some analysts expressed concerns that China’s status as the “world’s factory” may end within a year.
China’s reputation as “world’s factory” is fading as the industry faces a harsh downturn. An increasing wave of original equipment manufacturers in China declared bankruptcy, shut down, or moved out of the country in the second half of 2014
Sometimes practitioners of Falun Gong would disappear from Masanjia Women’s Forced Labor Camp without a trace. Their clothes and other belongings would remain behind, but the practitioners could not be found. One inmate only fully understood what those disappearances meant after she had been released from the labor camp.
The debt owed by China’s corporations, in bonds and short-term loans, exceeds the GDP by over 50 percent, and is a credit bomb waiting to explode, experts say.