Justin Fox, Columnist

China's $5 Trillion Opportunity

Productivity gains are good for China's economy, but layoffs are bad for stability.

July 5, 2016 at 3:53 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

What should we do about laggards?
Photographer: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Getty Images

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Most metal detectors in China share a curious trait: The alarm goes off no matter what.1467729998085 You can have emptied your pocket of every last coin, and the thing still sounds. Then there are usually two young women waiting to screen you with hand-held detectors that do seem to work.

After several experiences with this procedure, I developed a theory that the useless metal detectors were part of a vast job-preservation scheme, an indication of the Chinese government’s unwillingness to countenance job losses in the service of efficiency.