Top ten catch phrases in China since 1978 reform

Source: Xinhua | 12-15-2008 08:12

BEIJING, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese media selected the 10 most popular phrases from the past three decades to mark the official 30th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, which falls on this month.

When China began to reform and open-up 30 years ago, people began experiencing, seeing and doing new things. In fact things were so new, they needed to create new words to describe what was happening.

In order of popularity, starting with number one:

"Go in for business"

In the 1980s when China was starting to transition from a planned economy to a market economy, it had a two-track pricing system (official and market prices) for industrial raw materials, including steel, non-ferrous metals, timber and coal.

Seeing business opportunities within the pricing system, many people, especially government employees and those from state-run factories or institutes, quit their jobs to open their own businesses.

"Going for business" was often used to refer to the phenomena of people breaking away from the constraints of a planned system to embrace the market economy.

"Be laid off and get re-employed"

To adapt to the market economy and improve competitiveness of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the 1990s, China began restructuring.

"Encouraging mergers, standardizing bankruptcy, laying off and reassigning redundant workers, streamlining for higher efficiency" was a guideline in the SOEs reforms.

No official statistics show how many workers were laid off during that period, but experts estimate the number could be tens of millions.

To avoid social unrest and help most of those workers find new jobs, the Chinese central government offered occupational trainings, small loans and preferential tax policies.

"Migrant worker"

China's reform and opening-up drive started in rural areas in 1978 with collectively-owned farmland contracted to individual families. This freed about 100 million peasants from farm work.

However, most of these people were tied to the countryside by a residence-based rationing system for virtually everything, including food. About 63 million of these former farmers were given jobs in village-run enterprises that mushroomed in those days.

A policy change in 1984 allowed them to find jobs in cities but the massive migration of rural laborers didn't start until after China decided to move to a market economy in 1992.