Global Times, a national government run newspaper in China has written an article in support of adopting a four day work week, or more precisely a three day weekend, in China. Though not saying it should be an immediate transition, they would like to see it implemented in coming decades. To satisfy the conflict between the government five day work week and the desired three day weekend, the paper proposed an eight day calendar week.
Given the slow down in China’s growth rate, and the imagined difficulty of transitioning to a new calendar, this would have to take quite a long time to safely implement. The question of how this plan would benefit the worker, as opposed to shorter hours worked each day, is also not addressed.
What is the current work week? In the US it was 6 x 12 hour days into the 1910s. The 40-hour work-week wasn’t prevalent until after WWII. In Japan in the 1970s the work-week remained 5-1/2 days. In any case, this seems like a humor piece (an 8 day week?), not a serious proposal.
I wonder how such a big change as this would affect the global economy. We have learned throughout the course just how prolific Chinese manufacturing is, would the world have to change pace because of China? For example, if the U.S. wants to do business on a day that falls on one of China’s three “weekend days.” Is business just to halt until those three days have passed?. I feel that this would be disruptive to the rest of the world and China would potentially lose business.