China is in the midst of its biggest ever modernization of labor laws and labor market regulation, coming into force Jan. 1, 2008. The labor reforms grant the individual worker more employment protection rights enforceable by law, and mean more legal certainty for foreign employers. A total of 7,000 employees resigned from Huawei en masse. Wal-Mart is also cutting its labor force worldwide. Despite China’s spectacular GDP growth of nearly 10% per year since 1978, and despite Beijing’s claim that the country remains on a socialist course, in the eight years leading up to 2005, workers’ wages as a proportion of GDP plunged from 53% to 41.4%. This comes from  a report translated from Chinese and published in AmCham-China’s News Wire.