FRITZ HOFFMANN/DOCUMENTCHINA FOR TIME

WORLDS APART: These days, unemployed resident Zhang kills a lot of his time in bed; his friend Hou drives a cab

The clock strikes noon in the city of Daqing and Zhang Jian is still asleep, his knobbly ankles and narrow shoulders protruding from his worn comforter. Beside him, slouched in a dusty office chair, his aunt, Zhang Xiali, plays Minesweeper on the computer. Today, like every other day, there is nothing for them to do but sleep and play computer games. Ever since Zhang, 20, finished school three years ago, he hasn't been able to find a decent job. His 33-year-old aunt has been unemployed for two years. "This used to be a great place for workers," says Zhang, smoking a Red River cigarette in bed, "but that ended with my father's generation. Young people today have no job security."

	Young people today have no job security. —ZHANG JIAN,  unemployed Daqing youth

For decades, Daqing, nestled in China's northeast, was hailed as a triumph of communist enterprise and self-sufficiency. Half a century ago, the city was nothing more than a desolate stretch of grasslands and conifer forests. But after oil was discovered there in 1959, Chairman Mao Zedong sent 40,000 soldiers and factory workers to this frozen outpost to fashion the People's Republic's first boomtown. Among the new migrants was Zhang's grandfather, who helped build Daqing's railway and believed he was creating a Maoist Utopia. Although the work was hard and cold—the temperature in these parts dips to -40°C—Zhang's grandfather enjoyed an iron rice bowl. Housing, education, health insurance and other benefits were all provided by the city's main employer, the Daqing Petroleum Administration. Other Chinese may still have been foraging for enough to eat, but the 2.4 million residents of Daqing—the name means "Big Celebration"—knew the oil company would take care of them. By 1963, the remote settlement was producing 4.4 million tons of oil, more than two-thirds of the nation's total output. So proud was Mao that he proclaimed: "In industry, learn from Daqing."

Today, Daqing is no longer a workers' paradise. It still produces one-third of the nation's oil. But since 1999, the state-owned oil company has been forced to privatize parts of its operation and cut nearly a third of its 300,000-strong Daqing work force. The laid-off employees were given a lump-sum settlement, with the most fortunate receiving $540 per year of work, but the amount hardly covers a new life of paying unsubsidized heating bills and finding private health insurance. Some, unused to holding such a large amount of cash, lost it in the stock market or at gambling dens. Two years ago, the residents of Daqing staged the largest workers' protest in the People's Republic's history. Tens of thousands gathered in Iron Man Square, a vast cement space commemorating one of Daqing's most industrious model workers, to demand benefits they say the company promised but never gave them.

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