Working class struggles in China

Working class struggles in China

Working class struggle is an important part of modern Chinese history, and is rising.

In a late industrialising country, the Chinese working class emerged and became organised only in the early 20th century after the country was forced to open up to global capitalism.

However, shaped by harsh economic exploitation and foreign semi-colonial domination, China’s working class quickly established itself in the space of a few decades. This culminated in mass protests and strikes between 1925 and 1927.

Given the conditions in which it found itself, the labour movement could not but have both an economic and political focus. However, it was soon brutally crushed by the pro-capitalist Nationalist Party. For the next few decades, China’s industrial working class on the whole remained a weak political force.

Under Mao’s state-led industrialisation after the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the urban industrial working class grew in number and strength.

Urban workers were entitled to extensive social welfare and employment security. As a price for this state paternalism, the urban working class was politically subordinate to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Throughout the Maoist period, the CCP forbade independent labour organising and established the All-China Federation of Trade Unions as the only recognised union in China. It had branches in every state-owned enterprise, serving primarily welfare functions under the control of party branches.

Despite its increased strength and periodic outbursts of protests throughout the Maoist period, the Chinese working class under Mao did not become an independent organised force.

With China’s restoration of capitalism from the late 1970s, workers’ rights began to be significantly eroded.

The process of restructuring state-owned enterprises along market principles started in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. This led to the privatisation and closure of state-owned enterprises.

Tens of millions of state workers — usually less skilled workers in their 40s and 50s — were laid off or forced into early retirement. They could not easily find new jobs due to their age and lack of education.

The remaining state workers lost guaranteed job security and were forced to sign contracts with fewer social welfare provisions.
Chinese workers resisted the detrimental effects of capitalist restoration during the 1980s. Many joined the student-led demonstrations in 1989 that culminated in the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre.

Some worker activists set up autonomous trade unions in Tiananmen Square. They put forward a more radical critique of China’s authoritarian capitalism than the liberal students and intellectuals.
Although relatively few in number, the worker activists were far more determined and militant than the students.

Before the autonomous unions could further consolidate, the movement was decisively crushed. Worker activists were severely punished in the aftermath of the crackdown.

But by the late 1990s, in the face of the restructuring and privatisation of state-owned enterprises, Chinese workers organised large numbers of protests. However they were unable to stop the state’s plans.

Labour protests in state-owned enterprises became less frequent from the early 2000s. However, workers who migrated from rural areas to work in China’s southern export-processing zones initiated their own struggles.

Discriminated against by the household registration system and forced to work in unregulated Satanic Mills-like conditions, rural migrant workers organised protests against low or unpaid wages and violations of their basic labour rights.

Such protests were typically met with violence from company-hired thugs and armed police.

Due to the repression, protests remained largely localised. Independent labour organising continues to be strictly forbidden by the state, and labour activists and lawyers representing workers are dealt with harshly.

To ease tensions, the Chinese state enacted protective labour laws to channel industrial disputes into legal institutions. The minimum wage was raised annually to preempt strikes.

But implementation of these laws is usually non-existent in the private sector, and wages remain low despite minimum wage rises. It is not surprising that workers have continued to take direct action to make their demands heard.

The autoworkers’ strikes at Honda plants in 2010 captured international attention. The striking workers at the Honda component parts plants were able to shut down production in all four of Honda’s assembly plants in China.

They won significant wage rises after government and state-controlled union officials intervened to mediate the disputes.

The autoworkers’ struggle also inspired more than 100 copycat strikes in the region. Media reporting of the strikes was banned by the government for fear of inciting more.

But such copycat strikes have been commonplace in recent years, as the poor conditions of the working class were similar everywhere.
But there have been other examples of labour activism. In late 2010, strikes broke out in the Dalian Economic Zone involving nearly 70,000 workers from 73 plants. A similar large-scale strike took place in the same economic zone in 2005.

Taxi and truck drivers as well as sanitation workers have also engaged in collective actions in recent years to demand better pay and conditions.

In November, workers from plants owned by Pepsi in more than five cities launched a coordinated strike against a corporate takeover, which they believed would lead to layoffs and reductions of wages and benefits.

This was followed by several strikes in China’s export-processing zones late last year. Notably, two major strikes also took place in state-owned chemical and steel plants in December and January. Both involved thousands of workers.

The CCP has clearly recognised the rising power of the working class. It has sought a more conciliatory approach, intervening in industrial disputes to negotiate limited wage rises to restore industrial peace.
It has also directed the state-controlled unions to establish branches and set up collective bargaining in private and foreign invested enterprises to preempt and mediate disputes. These state-controlled bureaucratic unions have little interest in representing workers, let alone organising them.

Not surprisingly, workers have no faith in the state and management-controlled unions. Whenever they can, they have demanded democratising these unions by electing their own representatives.
The state suppression of independent labour organisation has continued to block the formation of independent labour unions. This has held back the development of organised working class struggle in China.

Through industrial actions, workers have made important gains in wages and working conditions, but these are isolated and limited victories. It is difficult for workers to build on these gains because they do not have their own organisations to sustain their struggles.
The victories have also come under attack by factory closures, as Chinese export continues to be affected by the slowdown of global economy and foreign export markets.

With labour struggles growing in the coastal regions and wages rising, manufacturing capital has launched a counter-offensive by relocating production facilities to China’s hinterland in north and western China. It aims to take advantage of the cheaper and less militant labour force there.

Despite such obstacles and counter-offensives, there is no doubt that working-class struggle will not slow down in 2012. We are likely to see more frequent strikes and greater assertiveness and coordination.

Workers will become more confident and skilled in organising and sustaining struggles.

The prospect of achieving significant changes in the short-term, however, should not be exaggerated. It will take a long and continuing struggle for workers to achieve political and economic democracy.

But when it does, it will have a profound impact on the global working class struggle against capitalism.

Workers at a Sumitomo Corp. (8053) steel sheet processing plant in the Chinese city of Dongguan walked off the job earlier this week over a disagreement regarding retirement bonuses.

About 190 workers, or roughly 90% of the workforce, joined a strike that began Monday over payouts to employees retiring as a result of the plant’s move to a different location.

The plant has since returned to normal operations with the strike having already ended as of Friday.

The plant processes steel for use in consumer electronics, office equipment and automobiles.

Strikes have erupted at Chinese factories, including those operated by Japanese firms, at a rapid clip since fall 2011. Such actions are often triggered by corporate reorganizations such as a plant move or a sale to another company.

Over 5000 workers from Hanzhong Iron and Steel Group Company in Shaanxi Province went on a strike on Tuesday to protest low wages and long working hours. They blocked the factory entrance, demanding a pay raise. They didn’t get a response from the factory’s management. The next day, they took a banner to the streets reading, "We want our lawful rights and interests, we need food to survive."

According to China Jasmine Revolution website, local police disrupted the procession by blocking and dispersing the protesters. More than a dozen workers were arrested. A local government staffer admitted the strike, but declined to provide more information.

[Local Government Staffer]:
"Now the government is resolving the issue."

[NTD Reporter]:
"So they are still on strike today?"

[Local Government Staffer]:
"I can’t tell you anything about it, I can’t tell you over the phone."

The workers from Hanzhong Iron and Steel Group Company have complained over the Internet that they do not have any time off on weekends, holidays and annual leave. Their monthly wage is 1,500 yuan, about 238 US dollars. It’s hard to survive with the low payment in China where inflation is soaring.

According to the official website of Hanzhong Iron and Steel Group, the company is a newly developed private enterprise after it acquired several local state-owned enterprises since 2003. Currently the company has more than 5500 employees, and 1098 professional and technical personnel.

Several journalists have reported being attacked in the village of Panhe, in China’s Zhejiang Province. They were investigating protests over land grabs that took place earlier this month. The Foreign Correspondents Club of China told AP that a Dutch reporter was beaten up by men who appeared to be plainclothes police officers. He was conducting interviews in the village on Wednesday.

A reporter from the TV station France 24 and his Chinese colleague encountered a similar situation. Several cars followed them as they approached the village to conduct interviews. The TV station told the Shanghaiist that once the pair stopped, they were attacked by about 20 to 30 plainclothes thugs who also smashed their camera.

The pair later went to the local public security bureau where officials told them that they were attacked by villagers engaged in a feud between the eastern and western parts of the village. The public security bureau then gave them the equivalent of 7000 US dollars in compensation for the destruction of their equipment.

Protests have been taking place in the village of Panhe since the beginning of February. Villagers told NTD that local officials sold their land without giving them any compensation. One resident commented that the entire village was involved in the protests. According to the Associated Press, there have been reports of beatings and detentions by police.

The ongoing and intensifying state crackdown in China, increasingly targeting left activists and critics, is highlighted by the case of 24-year old Zhang Shujie, a supporter of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI).

Zhang is a socialist and advocate of independent trade unions and workers’ rights in China. He is a contributor to the chinaworker.info website and a supporter of the CWI, which has members and supporters in many countries including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since 2009, Zhang has been a correspondent for the chinaworker.info site and for the bi-monthly magazine, Socialist. Both the website and the magazine are banned in China.

In February 2011, Zhang became one of countless victims of the latest wave of repression in China, driven by the Beijing dictatorship’s fear of revolt following the fall of the dictator Mubarak in Egypt and the explosion of revolutionary struggle across the Arab world. The plight of left activists in China, who are increasingly targeted by the regime, is almost never reported by the capitalist media globally, which prefers to focus on cases involving liberals or pro-Western dissidents whose ideas are more to their liking.

In October 2011, Zhang managed to leave China, evading his police ‘minders’ with the help of friends and comrades in the CWI and others, in China, Hong Kong and Europe. These include parliamentarians Joe Higgins and Paul Murphy of the Socialist Party (CWI) in Ireland, and ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, legislator for the LSD in Hong Kong. Had Zhang remained in China he risked a long period of detention, with state security agents threatening he could be charged with “divulging state secrets” and “inciting subversion against state power”, which is punishable by ten years imprisonment. These charges are commonly brought against dissidents in China today. The definition of “state secrets” is very broad, covering for example the questioning the government’s version of the number of schoolchildren killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, to the amounts of foreign currencies held in China’s reserves. Zhang is currently in Sweden, where his case will be discussed at a hearing in the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), on human rights and state repression in China, at the end of January.

How state repression works

Zhang was called to a meeting with state security agents in the city of Chongqing on February 24, 2011. This was at the start of a large-scale pre-emptive crackdown in China to snuff out discussion of a ‘Jasmine Revolution’ inspired by events in the Middle East and North Africa. Zhang was not allowed to contact a lawyer or to inform his family. Security agents said they ‘knew everything’ about his activities and told him he could be detained indefinitely, i.e. ‘disappeared’, unless he gave them information about everyone he had met or been in contact with, ‘confessed’ his links with the CWI, and agreed to ‘cooperate’ with the security forces. Such methods are typical for the state security forces in China.

When Zhang was first taken for interrogation he was held for 28 hours during which time he was made to stand, deprived of his spectacles and refused food for several hours. Despite the fact that he was never formally charged with an offence, his computer, mobile phone and bank documents were seized and examined for evidence. He was warned he could face several years imprisonment for ‘contact with a banned organisation’ and for ‘crimes relating to state security’. He was told that he could avoid this fate if he ‘cooperated’ with the security forces. With no alternative, Zhang agreed to their demands. Unknown to police and against their explicit instructions, he contacted CWI comrades to seek advice and help.

In the following months the state security officers read correspondence between Zhang and his comrades, instructing him on how to reply. They urged him to volunteer to attend meetings in Hong Kong, which they would pay for. They gave detailed instructions that he should photograph meeting participants and other activists with his mobile phone and collect personal information. While the main focus of their enquiries was the CWI-linked group Socialist Action and mainland China CWI supporters, the Chongqing state security department also quizzed Zhang about this groups’ ties with other radical forces such as the League of Social Democrats (LSD) and legislator, Leung Kwok-hung. They wanted to know if there was a possible link-up between the CWI and Leung, whom Zhang has met during previous visits to Hong Kong. LSD is a radical pro-democracy group which is not connected to the CWI.

As a separate legal and juridical entity, China’s police and courts have no writ inside Hong Kong. According to Hong Kong’s ‘Basic Law’ (mini-constitution) its citizens’ rights to political association are legally protected and the mainland state authorities have no formal powers to interfere with or monitor these activities.

This means that the Chongqing branch of state security instructed Zhang, under threat of imprisonment, to engage in ‘unconstitutional’ activities in Hong Kong. These security officials subsequently paid for Zhang’s visit to Hong Kong to attend a CWI meeting in October 2011, and gave instructions to collect information on political activists in the city – including an elected member of Hong Kong’s legislature.

Zhang had no intention of carrying out the regime’s dirty work. He made arrangements with CWI comrades and supporters to leave China, during his visit to Hong Kong.

This case exposes the brutal and lawless methods of the Chinese dictatorship despite its efforts to project a more sophisticated image. Foreign governments and the multinational companies whose interests they hold closest to heart have largely dropped any criticism of human rights abuses and the Chinese regime’s increasingly repressive rule. Those who have dared to challenge this repressive system and paid the price for this deserve the support and solidarity of all left and democratic forces.
Today, China is experiencing the most severe police crackdown for more than a decade, a process that Amnesty International has described as ‘chilling’. Hundreds of writers, lawyers and activists have been rounded up and ‘disappeared’ by police. The targeting of high profile individuals such as artist Ai Weiwei and activist lawyers such as Gao Zhisheng, has been used to warn others and underline that nobody is untouchable. Within this wider crackdown, the targeting of prominent activist lawyers, those who have defended other victims of repression, has dealt a huge blow to any suggestion of an independent legal system emerging in China.

In the final days of 2011 several court verdicts dispelled any suggestion of a let up in the crack down. Sichuan-based writer Chen Wei was sentenced to nine years in prison for ‘subversive writing’ and Guizhou-based Chen Xi was given a 10-year sentence, also for “inciting subversion” in trials either side of Christmas Day. Another high profile dissident, Ni Yulan is currently on trial in Beijing for “making trouble” due to her role in defending victims of land grabs and could also face a draconian sentence.

Last year, China’s internal security budget ballooned to 624 billion yuan (US$95 billion), exceeding its military budget. The influence of hard line proponents of repression within the regime has been strengthened. With a crucial leadership and governmental succession due to occur in 2012, and amid severe economic challenges that could trigger social unrest, the current regime has effectively given carte blanche to the security forces to write their own rules in subduing potential opposition voices.

Security forces have made increasing use of forced disappearances, secret detentions and other ‘extra legal’ measures effectively shifting the parameters as far as China’s already limited legal rights of expression are concerned. “Such acts are carried out in more and more blatant ways, with officials abandoning even the pretence of obeying the law,” noted Amnesty International in a June 2011 report.

New and more intrusive internet controls, plans for the world’s biggest security database to boost social controls, and tough new restrictions on ‘weibo’ micro-blogging sites, which have become a popular means of exposing official abuses and reporting mass protests, are all part of the same pattern of increased authoritarian controls.

Repression against chinaworker.info

Recent years have seen a marked upswing in left wing and anti-capitalist ideas in China, similar to processes internationally, where growing numbers of young people especially are rejecting the capitalist market system in the light of the global financial crisis and widening inequality. Previously, the Chinese regime did not pay much attention to left critics, believing that liberal and ‘pro-Western’ influences represented its biggest political threat. This began to change decisively in and around 2008, and the state security’s monitoring and attacks on left groups and individuals has increased significantly.

Maoists, ‘New leftists’, Trotskyists and others who stand up for workers’ rights, especially those who advocate independent organisations for working people, have been detained and in several cases brought to trial for ‘inciting subversion’, ‘violating social order’, and similar charges. Several of these cases have been reported on chinaworker.info.

Zhang Shujie’s political activity, and the activity of other CWI supporters in China, is of a literary nature. He has written and translated articles for the chinaworker.info website and ‘Socialist’ magazine (the magazine is circulated as an underground e-magazine inside China with the help of many courageous individuals).