ML-Implode News - China's Shift Away From Industry Drains Life From a Steel Town

``The uprooting of company towns is part of a painful transition as the heavy industries that for decades powered China's rise fade amid falling demand and overinvestment. The government is trying to shift the giant economy to a new track built on consumer spending, services and technology-driven manufacturing.
Fears that the shift is proving trickier than Beijing can handle undermined the confidence of investors world-wide that China would soon re-emerge as a source of global growth.
...
Cities and towns across China are losing some of their biggest employers in a process reminiscent of the factory shutdowns that decades ago hit Rust Belt America, from Detroit to Baltimore.
...
As communities begin to hollow out, it is straining a social compact that has been a feature of the Communist Party's rule: that state-owned companies would take care of the industrial workforce, even in difficult times. It is a bargain meant to keep workers from going on strike, or worse, becoming a source of antigovernment unrest, like the dockyard workers who helped bring down Poland's communist government.

Relevant:

China's Shift Away From Industry Drains Life From a Steel Town