The worker, or jishu worker, is actually more difficult than the machine and equipment level. Of course, if the Soviet Union already has a certain industrial base (the working class alone can seize power is enough), then it is only necessary to bring in some mid-to-high-end talents, and the difficulty is naturally greatly reduced. And if you can endure loneliness, and the external environment also allows for peaceful development, and you are not in a hurry to achieve success, then the demand for ordinary technicians will only increase gradually, and it is completely too late to train slowly.

However, China's industrial base is weak, and the whole country is eager for national rejuvenation, and it is inevitable that there will be some eagerness for quick success, so this difficulty will become more and more insurmountable

The use of the Jihua economic system to facilitate the concentration of the country's advantages to carry out large projects and projects, and then drive the development and progress of the overall industry, is of course the magic weapon for the backward countries to accelerate industrialization, but the forced "birth" of the large urban population will lead to an oversupply of industrial labor after 20 years or even less time.

In 1957, the total number of workers was almost double that of 1952, when there was no birth policy, and almost all of the five or six million new urban population were of marriageable age, and at the same time, the tradition of high fertility in an agricultural society was generally not changed (in fact, the situation of the original urban residents would not be much better, and before the concept of eugenics and fertility was formed, the fertility rate could not be reduced without relying on compulsory regulations). It is very common for a family to have five or six children, so it is conceivable that twenty years later these children will reach adulthood. Even if not a single peasant moves to the cities, China's urban population will increase at least several times, and the working-age population will only grow even more. It is important to know that the parents of these young people are not yet of retirement age.

This means that in 20 years, China will need to have several times the number of urban jobs in 1957, and considering that technological progress will increase labor productivity (i.e., reduce the demand for workers), it is feared that China's industrial scale will need to expand tenfold in these two decades to barely meet the employment needs of urban youth. But in the twenty years when there was no large-scale Soviet aid in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, where was it so easy to increase the scale of industry tenfold (and at least tenfold)? In fact, as early as the late 1960s, the Chinese government was already struggling with the employment of urban youth, and the call to "go to the mountains and go to the countryside" certainly had political considerations. In fact, it is also to alleviate the huge employment pressure in the city, but this is ultimately a palliative rather than a cure, and the cost is extremely high.

In order to avoid the massive unemployment of the urban population, serious social problems (in fact, could not be avoided). That's why there was a "strike hard" later. The new Chinese government was forced to restrict the large influx of rural people into the cities with hukou, which led to the widening of the gap between urban and rural areas, and the division between "urban people" and "rural people" tended to solidify, which increased the contradictions between urban and rural residents. However, even after paying so many costs, it was still difficult to fundamentally solve the employment problem, and it was not until the reform and opening up that foreign investment was introduced. In this way, the international market was opened, and the problem was finally solved (Note 1). Therefore, although the large-scale introduction of foreign capital at all costs in the 80s did not "exchange the market for jishu" as expected (Note 2), the correctness of this decision cannot be denied because it only solved the problem of urban youth employment.

Similar problems have arisen to varying degrees in the industrialization process of other countries, but no other country is as serious as China. In addition to the extremely high fertility rate of the Chinese at that time, the "Skilled Workers Rapid Method", which made a miraculous contribution to the rapid completion of primary industrialization in New China, also played a role in fueling the situation. On the other hand, if the training of jishu workers was carried out in a step-by-step manner, the increase in the urban population would have been much more gradual, and the corresponding unemployment problem would have been much easier to solve.

But even if he knew this, Hu Weidong, who was eager for China to become strong quickly, was unwilling to sacrifice the speed of development for the sake of stability, but had been thinking hard about how to solve the problem of unemployment in the future. Hu Weidong's initial idea was to use the international market to tide over this crisis, and as long as it was difficult to export on a large scale because it was not hostile to the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union at the same time, as in history, and at the same time had export commodities that were highly competitive in the world, his idea might not be unsuccessful. However, after making the decision to train a large number of Japanese prisoners of war, Hu Weidong suddenly realized that there seemed to be a more sophisticated way: Bringing in a large number of foreign workers now can solve the current problem of shortage of skilled workers in China, and when the employment pressure increases in the future, those foreign workers who are not urgently needed will be directly dismissed, and jobs will not be vacated. Anyway, they are foreigners, and the Chinese government is not responsible for their jobs, as long as the contract is not signed for too long in advance

Note 1: In fact, the more important reason is that the Jihua economy is a "big government", and all economic activities (at least in the city) are under the control of the government, so urban young people can find the government if they can't find a job (even unreasonable requirements such as too hard work and need to change can be raised, as long as the number of people is large enough and not to the point of violating the criminal law, or even a small scoundrel, the government at that time can't do it), so a little unemployment will cause a great social impact. As long as the number of unemployed is not large enough to a certain extent, the government only needs to sit back and wait for the market to digest it slowly, while the unemployed have to take the initiative to find a job to support themselves in order to make a living, and they dare not wait for the government to lend a hand, so it is naturally much easier to "solve" the problem of unemployment

Note 2: A lot of science and technology have been introduced, but most of them are cooperation at the national level, and they are paid for the joint efforts of China and the United States to resist the Soviet Union, even if they are not open to the outside world. And the introduction of foreign capital itself hardly gets any valuable technology, because the foreign capital is basically a sweatshop with low jishu content (to be continued). )