On Low-end Sector Employment And Urban Environmental Management Of Conflict

There is nearly irreconcilable conflict between bottom-sector employment and urban environmental management, which was once trapped into the vicious circle of violence on the law-enforcement spots. Even the recent tolerance that some urban governments show to bottom-sector employees is too limited to resolve such a conflict at the root. In order to do so, firstly, the scale of bottom sector should be shrunk, and secondly, more urban space should be distributed to common and poor people, both of which cannot escape reflecting on and adjusting the development strategy, because some key causes of the conflict are closely associated with the error of the strategy. Therefore, it becomes an effort-worthy job to explain, based on the "People Foremost" principle, how the conflict in China between bottom-sector employment and urban environmental management is endogenous from the development strategy, which is the very research object of this paper.The real significance of the topic selected is to help related public agencies to go beyond piecemeal approaches on the technical level but to grasp the fundamental cause why the "Diversion & Containment" policy cannot be smoothly carried out on the strategical level, which will facilitate them to prescribe more all-rounded and more suitable remedy to the illness. By doing so, sustainable harmony can be achieved among bottom-sector employees, common residents and urban governments: the government can satisfy the justified claims of the former to the rights to live and to develop without sacrificing the basic environmental fights of the latter.The current development strategy is GDP-oriented and growth-prioritized, which will cause and intensify the above-mentioned conflict through the three routes as follows (See the Research Road Map at the end of Chapter 3):Route 1: In order to achieve fast GDP growth shortly, local governments depend on crude and extensive growth mode; the effective demand for human capital of a resource-overusing society is so little that there are few opportunities to develop fully realizing the value of human, which will depress the development of human themselves, impeding low-quality laborers' developing into high-quality ones; once the traditional industries become more and more capital-intensive, lots of low-quality laborers will be unemployed and forced into bottom sector. And low-quality laborers themselves create the market for bottom sector and enhance its expansion. (See Chapter 5 and Chapter 6)Route 2: In order to attract more enterprises to create more GDP, urban governments over-favor businesses when distributing urban space, sacrificing the interests of common and poor people, and causing bottom sector seriously short of operation space; there constitutes an irreconcilable conflict between the great scale of bottom sector and the shortage of the operation space. And such space shortage further deprives low-quality laborers of the opportunities to develop. (See Chapter 7)Route 3: Because both the economic growth mode and the urban space distribution deprive peasants of the opportunities to develop, along with the Residence Certification System, they will hamper peasants to develop into true urban residents, obstructing the urbanization of China; the lag of urbanization will curb new effective demands, further reducing opportunities to develop, which does harm to shrinking the low-status population depending on bottom sector. (See Chapter 8)All the above arguments show the conflict in China between bottom-sector employment and urban environmental management is endogenous from the Crowth-prioritized Development Strategy. Therefore, only by shifting the development strategy onto the "People Foremost" track can the conflict be resolved at the root: regarding the welfare growth of human as the aim of development, the development of human themselves as the engine of development, and the accumulation of human capital as the route of development.As to bottom sector reforming, the "People Foremost" Scientific Development Strategy should be reflected in the two respects as follows:Firstly, in terms of industry development, more attention should be paid to nurturing human-capital-intensive industries to accommodate low-quality laborers in order to guide and help them to develop the value of human themselves, based on which environmentally-friendliness can be achieved. The aim of such industries is not to create GDP but to create opportunities to develop for low-quality laborers. (See Chapter 9)Secondly, in terms of urban space utilization, the related property rights scheme should be established that guarantees both bottom-sector employees' rights to develop and residents' basic environmental rights, and also can enhance efficiency of environmental regulation. Besides, efficiency enhancing for environmental regulation can expand the accommodating capacity of urban environment for bottom sector so as to create more opportunities to develop for its employees. (See Chapter 10)However, we should be clearly-minded that the adjustment of development strategy and after-effects eliminating of the old strategy cannot produce desired results soon, so the above-mentioned conflict will last for long. It will take years to nurture human capital and human-capital-intensive industries, and solidified urban hardware infrastructure cannot be altered in the near future.Theoretically, the core innovation of this paper is to explain, in the angel of opportunity to develop, how the Growth-prioritized Development Strategy causes and intensifies the conflict in China between bottom-sector employment and urban environmental management in the three routes of economic growth mode, urban space distribution and urbanization, based on which some related policy suggestions are proposed.Other main innovations include:Firstly, as to urban governments' behavior to reduce the space for bottom sector in order to attract more enterprises, this paper does some positive examination work with an econometrics model based on theoretical analysis. (See Chapter 7)Secondly, as to the process of traditional vendor economy upgrading to human-capital-intensive "Street Culture Industry", this paper, with labor economics models, systematically analyzes the labor distribution behavior, human capital investment behavior and environment investment behavior of vendors, based on which the governmental responsibilities for vendors' human capital investment are explained. (See Chapter 9)Thirdly, by introducing the principles of property rights economics into the scenario of vending governance, this paper work out a systematic plan to establish the related property rights scheme that guarantees both bottom-sector employees' rights to development and residents' basic environmental fights, and also can enhance efficiency of environmental regulation so that the accommodating capacity of urban environment for bottom sector can be expanded. (See Chapter 10)This paper's value to social practice lies in that assistance to the fundamental adjustment of related macro-policies will help bring the conflict-facing urban environmental regulators out of "the Dilemma between Diversion and Containment" more quickly.