https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7314-373X
Abstract
Quota systems represent one of the most important and widely used approaches to promote the employment of people with disabilities in many countries around the world. Extant literature has focused on how quota systems have been implemented in some European countries and some Asian countries. Few studies, however, have examined the situation in China, where a formal law and regulations for a quota system for disability employment was established over the past three decades. This paper addresses this gap by presenting background on the development of China’s quota employment policies, examining the inconsistencies between policy and implementation, and identifying feasible ways to enhance the policy’s use to create more inclusion in employment in public and private sectors.
1. Introduction
Two policy approaches have typically been used throughout the world to promote the employment of people with disabilities. One is the ‘equality of opportunity’ approach, based on anti-discrimination laws; the other is a quota system (Hasegawa 2007). A quota system requires public and private sectors to have a workforce that includes a certain minimum percentage of disabled people. The quota may be specified by law or regulations or both, and it may vary in different sectors and industries. China established such a system in 1990, with its Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons (LPDP); in 2007, it also issued Regulations on the Employment of People with Disabilities in China. The regulations stipulated that public and private sectors reserve at least 1.5% of their workforce for disabled persons. Compared with the quotas of other countries, where the minimum levels range from 2% to 7% (Sargeant, Radevich-Katsaroumpa, and Innesti Citation2018), China’s mandatory minimum quota is quite low.
In 1995, China introduced a system that levies a fee on employers who fail to meet the legal minimum requirement for employment of disabled people. The levy supports the Employment Security Fund (ESF) for People with Disabilities, which can be used to support employers for hiring individuals with disabilities, and is also used to provide employment services and job training for disabled people. This combination of quota and levies has become the signature policy for promoting employment of disabled persons in China.
The existing literature has studied the implementation of quota systems in Europe (OECD Citation2003) and some Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea. Thus far, research on the implementation of China’s quota-levy system has been quite limited. Huang, Guo, and Bricout (Citation2009) analyzed China’s quota-related employment data for the period from 1996 to 2005, but the trajectories and trends have changed since then. This paper presents information on recent practices and the barriers that hold back greater integration of disabled people in the Chinese workforce. In addition, this paper further aims to identify feasible approaches to boost employment of disabled persons in China.
2. The implementation of china’s quota system
There are currently more than 30 million working-age people with disabilities in China. In recent years, the Chinese government has been committed to expanding employment channels for disabled persons, and improving the quantity and quality of their employment. At present, there are three main avenues of employment for disabled people in China: concentrative employment (an enterprise is defined as offering ‘concentrative employment’ when it employs more than 10 disabled people, and when the proportion of employees with disabilities exceeds 25% of all employees), the quota scheme, and self-employment. The quota system that has been in place in China for 30 years remains one of the important avenues for employment of individuals with disabilities.
According to the China Statistical Yearbook on the Work for Persons with Disabilities (2000-2015), more than 1 million disabled persons are employed through the quota system per year on average. The quota-based employment of individuals with disabilities rose steadily from the inception of the policy in the late 1990s, peaked in 2005, and then began to decline. From 2010, employment through the quote system began to stagnate, followed by a sharp decline in 2016, and a slight uptick in 2017 and 2018 ().
Figure 1. The trend of the number of disability employment forms submitted from 2000 to 2018 in China (unit: ten thousand).
3. The low compliance rate in the public sector
There is a wide discrepancy between the legislation, which aims for greater accessibility among people with disabilities, and the practices that have emerged in implementation. The employment rate of disabled people in China’s public sector is far below the mandated 1.5 percent. There is no routine supervision for implementation of the quota-levy system, which relies instead on sporadic investigation. In 2012, the law enforcement inspection group of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) conducted an inspection about the implementation of the LPDP. This inspection revealed that a number of units including public sector and government-affiliated institutions had neither employed disabled people nor paid levies for a long time. The same year, a report from a non-profit organization Nanjing Tianxiagong provided more detailed information from one region, Eastern China, revealing the existence of extremely low employment rates of civil servants with disabilities in that region. The organization’s request for disclosure of public information regarding the employment of disabled persons in 41 urban administrative units in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui provinces, received responses from 18 cities. Data from these cities showed an employment rate of disabled people of 0.03%, far below the legal quota of 1.5%. Furthermore, 12 of the cities that responded indicated that they had not recruited a single civil servant with disabilities in the four years since 2008, when certain amendments to the LPDP had gone into effect. The findings suggest that China’s quota-levy system has had little effect on public sector hiring decisions.
4. The preference for paying levies rather than hiring people with disabilities in the private sector
Research has shown that numerous enterprises in various countries are not willing to employ disabled people, as has been documented in Italy (Sargeant, Radevich-Katsaroumpa, and Innesti Citation2018). In China, evidence suggests that some employers have used payment of a levy as an alternative to avoid their obligation to employ those with disabilities. For instance, in Beijing, the total amount of levies paid grew from CNY 736 million in 2010 to CNY1,266 million in 2014 (Beijing Municipal Finance Bureau). These data imply that a growing number of employers failed to meet the legal quota.
5. The rise of ‘fake employment’ schemes aided and related intermediary agencies
To avoid either hiring people with disabilities or paying levies, some enterprises have begun to falsify their records to show that they have made their workplaces more inclusive, even when they have not taken such steps. Such enterprises skirt the law by paying wages and social insurance premiums as if they were employing disabled people. In practice, these enterprises find ways to make use of a disability certificate, stating that a certain employee has a disability. Firms then apply for a reduction in or exempting from levies imposed on firms that fail to hire those with disabilities. Issued after a medical evaluation, a disability certificate is an identification document given to an individual with a disability. An enterprise must have such a certificate for all its workers who are designated as having disabilities; it is needed to apply for the enterprise to qualify for related tax reductions or levy exemptions. Anecdotal information suggests that intermediary agencies have also surfaced to provide disability certificates for enterprises to provide documentation needed to falsify employment. This situation undermines needed opportunities for disabled persons to become socially integrated through employment.
6. Barriers to fulfilling the vision of an integrated workforce in China
An influential factor that has contributed to lack of further integration in the workplace in China stems from people’s traditional perceptions about people with disabilities. The Chinese word term for people with disabilities is ‘canji,’ which refers to disease and incompleteness (Qu 2020). Based on a medical model, the ‘canji’ terminology renders disabled people as flawed. Although the perception of disability has improved greatly worldwide in recent decades, discrimination against disabled persons is deeply embedded in Chinese society. Many people in China have sympathy for disabled people, but prejudice and discrimination are also commonplace, leading to social exclusion of this group of people. In such a social and cultural context, the public and private sectors are generally reluctant to hire disabled people.
Worldwide, the public sector generally takes greater social responsibility in employing persons with disabilities. In some countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Spain, a higher employment quota has been set for the public sector than for private sector. By contrast, the law in China established the same quota for both public and private sectors. As previously discussed, neither sector has met the quotas, and measures to aid greater implementation in both sectors are lacking. The private sector must comply with the quota or pay levies imposed by tax bureau. At the same time, however, no provisions have been made to provide compensation to the private sector to cover related costs, such as the construction of accessible facilities. This situation disincentivizes the hiring of disabled people.
Another impediment to greater inclusion in the workplace concerns the lack of transparency in the administration of the ESF. Though the funds are managed by the government, there is no open and transparent mechanism to assess revenue generation and expenditures of funds. This leads citizens to question whether the funds are indeed used for the people they are intended to benefit, namely, those with disabilities.
7. Discussion and conclusions
The establishment of an inclusive social context and workplace is crucial for employment of people with disabilities. To a large extent, the evolution toward a more-inclusive social environment and workplace depends on the transformation of people’s attitudes toward disability. Long-held and engrained ideas about disabilities in China are barriers for employment of disabled people. Education is one important approach that can be used to implant new perspectives about inclusion in people’s minds. Such education intended to cultivate more greater inclusion of those with disabilities should begin at an early age. Fortunately, inclusive education has been introduced in China. In Beijing, for example, primary and middle schools with more than five disabled children must be equipped with special education resources. These resources make it possible for children with disabilities to obtain an education in an integrated way, with their peers who do not have disabilities. In this way, children without disabilities learn how to treat and get along with people who have disabilities. These educational practices should set the stage for a more inclusive atmosphere in general, and for greater prospects for employment of persons with disabilities in the future.
It would be valuable to establish a mechanism to regularly monitor and publicize the degree to which public and private sectors meet the set quota for the employment of disabled people. At present, China has created foundational policies to protect the employment right of people with disabilities. What it lacks is a way to ensure effective implementation of its laws and regulations. For public sector, a routine inspection conducted by NPC would be a good choice. As far as the private sector is concerned, the China’s Disabled Person’s Federation could undertake this task of supervision and monitoring.
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References
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