Macro Trends in Chinese Human Resources

As we move into a more advanced globalized economy we have developed from an

agriculture society to a service society. As with every other part of human development

we have continued down the path of innovation and change to what some today call the

“creative society”. It might be to early to say that we are entering a new age but it is clear

that changes happen faster and with greater impact across the globe and that is creating a

society that is different from before.

A society where the talented, educated, creative, are the catalyst of economic

development in a modern economy. But the rise of this creative class and the process of

globalization also offer problems. When people elevate themselves and those around

them to new heights through major change the people who are unable to transit into such

a world run the risk of being left behind. It is the paradox of Globalization; it brings

riches to the people who can adapt to it while the others are often left to tend for

themselves.

This thesis is about those effects on the world’s most populous nation, China. And when

it comes to these, the Human Resources, the most productive elements of a modern

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society, China is far behind. The Chinese race toward becoming a major global power is

as much about catching up to the rest of the world economically a socially and politically.

As China masses its economical muscles to change other problems evolve and the speed

of the change lead to even more complicated social problems that might come back to

haunt the country’s development path.

China is trying to do what it took the major developed nations of the world a larger part

of the last 300 years to do in one generation. Pushed by the need for reform the

communist party is juggling politics, economy, and education of their people in more and

more complicated ways and further and further away from each other. The story

however, starts on a train ride between Washington DC and New York.