Word: states
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Individuals are not the only ones eager to earn extra money. Under Deng's reforms, most state-run businesses and government agencies are expected to turn a profit. An aircraft factory in Xi'an runs a marriage-introduction center that does a booming business serving the needs of hundreds of well- educated women who by their late 20s are desperate for husbands because men with less schooling are reluctant to marry them. In Chengdu the Xinhua bookstore owns a flower shop, a hair salon and a clothing boutique whose manager gets his goods from "a guy in Shanghai...
...tensions generated by the scramble for money are never far from the surface. Orthodox executives of China's state-run enterprises are very much like the Soviet Union's permanent bureaucracy, the nomenklatura. They have coasted for years under the old system, and they dislike Deng's perestroika because it asks them to compete like capitalists, and capitalism has losers. "Keeping their jobs is their No. 1 priority," says Sinclair Choy, a marine engineer from Hong Kong, who in partnership with a coastal town on the mainland runs a fishing boat-repair business. "Order, stability, calm," says Choy. "That...
...wedding, as common in China as saying hello, establishes that one of the guests has more than a nodding acquaintance with cremation. "Yeah," says a middle-aged man proudly, "I burn stiffs for a living." Only I smile. Everyone else knows what's coming, a recitation of the state's official line against using precious land for burials. "This is ridiculous," says the man, arcing a wad of spittle behind him, a small measure of civility indicating that China's famous antispitting campaign has done little more than improve the people's aim. "Zhou Enlai once said that China...
...about $38 a month -- less than a factory worker, taxi driver, guide and just about every other employed Chinese receives. Even so, for the next four years Bi must get by on $12 less each month. Five dollars is deducted automatically because the cash-starved government insists that state employees buy bonds. The other $7 represents a fine for the second child he and his wife had three years ago -- one child over Beijing's limit...
...upgrade Lun Feng for state-of-the-art stuffed-toy manufacture, which really means little more than loading an empty building with sewing machines, Lun Feng's Hong Kong joint-venture partner lent the factory's nominal owner, the town of Kai Kong, more than $1 million. (The national government got its cut by charging a fee for converting the Hong Kong dollars into Chinese currency.) Since then, Lun Feng has been on its own. Much of the fabric used by the factory comes from Taiwan. "No problem," says Lun Feng's operations manager, who happens to belong...