A senior researcher on employment at Renmin University of China, Zeng Xiangquan, said at a recent forum that China faces quite high unemployment pressure, and as State-owned enterprises merge and restructure they might "lay off" large numbers of workers as they did in the late 1990s.

In order to keep the unemployment rate low and save face for leading local officials, China's SOEs avoid dismissing their workers amid financial difficulties. Instead they usually "lay off" workers instead, sending them home while paying them a minimum wage that's barely enough to cover living expenses, he said.

The National Bureau of Statistics registers the unemployment rate, but that does not reflect the true situation of the labor market because it is only about those with hukou, or residency registration.

The last wave of massive lay-offs happened in the late 1990s when SOEs were being reformed, which left millions of workers in effect unemployed and caused complicated social problems. Especially, as corruption happened in the lay-off process, some laid-off workers insisted on seeking justice, which resulted in conflicts with local authorities.

In the northeastern provinces where SOEs play dominant roles in the local economies, such conflicts are especially fierce and some of them still affect people's lives today.

(China Daily 11/10/2015 page8)