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I did a lot of research answering this Politics.SE question: "Is China really Communist?".

I was able to answer most items I decided to research (some of the answers were less intuitive than expected), but one item eluded me, and it's a legal one.

One of Marx's 10 tenets of establishing Communism, was "Equal liability of all to work". In USSR, there was a formal law based on the idea, prohibiting "social parasitism".

However, I was unable to find any mention of such law in PRC - but not being a lawyer OR speaking any Chinese, it's possible I simply didn't know the right terms to search for. Hence, the question for Law.SE:

Does People's Republic of China have "parasitism" law prohibiting people from not working or punishing them for not having a job?

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  • Good question. Not sure how to answer it myself, however, in part, because not all legal obligations in China are codified in a nice neat statutory compilation, so it might not be obvious that a law had that effect, even if it did.
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Jul 27, 2021 at 1:48

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Does [the] People's Republic of China have "parasitism" law prohibiting people from not working or punishing them for not having a job?

I cannot find any such requirement in either the Criminal Law or the Labour Law, but I see that the latter makes two references to providing state benefits to the "unemployed":

Article 70

The State shall develop social insurance undertakings, establish a social insurance system, and set up social insurance funds so that laborers may receive assistance and compensations under such circumstances as old age, illness, work-related injury, unemployment and child-bearing.

And:

Article 73

Laborers shall, in accordance with the law, enjoy social insurance benefits under the following circumstances:

...

  • (4) unemployment ...

...

The Labour Law also includes this, which coupled with the provision of state benefits for the unemployed, seems to suggest that the PRC do not prohibit "social parasitism" (officially anyway):

Article 5

The State shall take various measures to promote employment...

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    Typically "unemployment" is when you want to work but can't find a job, whereas I'd think "parasitism" would be when you could be working but choose not to.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Jul 28, 2021 at 15:22

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