Working Class of China: Rising from the Ashes - A Preliminary overview (3)
: Resistance of the SOE Workers
[In the last part of this article, published in the May 2009 issue of FAPP & subsequently uploaded in the web-edition of FAPP, contained some errors: First of all, at the end of the article it was not mentioned that the article is yet to be finished & would be continued in the coming issues. Secondly, in the heading "Struggle of the Present Phase", sub-heading "1. Mass struggle of the State Owned Enterprises (SOE) Workers", a short paragraph was given as part of introduction; however, both in the print edition as well as in web edition, part of this paragraph has been erased ? as a result of which the paragraph has appeared as meaningless. Thirdly, serial numbers of the sub-headings have been wrongly mentioned in the web edition of the article. We sincerely regret for these errors.]
Last part of this article was finished with a brief introduction of the "Resistance of the SOE workers". For the readers who have not gone thru' the previous two parts of the article, we can say that our declared purpose for entering into this subject was to understand the complex process of re-emergence of "bitter class struggle among the rulers & the ruled ones (workers & peasants) of China" during post-Mao era "with the perspective that this time it is initiated by a defeated army, who once tried to emerge as an independent ruling class but subsequently got defeated".
So, we decided "to investigate the process of development of (this) struggle from historical perspective. To do this, we have divided the history of nearly last thirty years in three phases: (i) struggle of the 1980s, (ii) struggle during 1st half of 1990s, and (iii) struggle of the present phase (we felt that current phase of struggle originally started from 2nd half of 1990s and is continuing till now)."
In the first part of this article published in the October-November 2008 issue of FAPP, we completed discussion up to the struggle of the 1st half of 1990s. In the last issue, we started to understand "struggle of the present phase". And to do that, we planned to divide this portion into three parts:
(a) mass struggle of the SOE workers;
(b) mass struggle of the non-SOE workers, especially migrant workers; mass struggle of the peasants.
In addition, we have planned to understand the role of revolutionary Marxists in these struggles as much as possible (as because dependable information in this regard is very few) during this phase & also the role of different NGOs in this phase of struggle, as because right now in China these organizations are also playing a significant role in these struggles. However, in the last issue, we have only been able to start understanding Mass Struggle of the SOE Workers. In the current issue, we shall continue to understand this struggle of the SOE workers. But before entering into this discussion, once again we would like to remind the readers that severe media-censorship in China (which is particularly more applicable in case of these type of struggles) is a big hindrance to get any fully authentic & conclusive information, so we are aware that this discussion will only be partial & nothing else.
In any case, we feel that to understand the position of the struggling SOE workers taken objectively during last 8-9 years, we need a preliminary review of the role of the only legal Trade Union in present China, ALL CHINA FEDERATON OF TRADE UNIONS (ACFTU) during post-Mao era. So, right now we are going to enter into this area.
After that, we'll make a very brief description of some of the SOE workers struggle & subsequently study the history of 4 specific plant level struggles, which have appeared to us most significant, in a bit detail.
After description of these struggles, in a separate point we'll try to sum up strengths & weaknesses of these struggles of SOE workers, surfacing during the era of temporary defeat of the international working class movement.
A] State of Affairs of ACFTU & Its Role in SOE Workers' Struggle
[The All-China Federation of Trade Unions was founded on May 1, 1925. (...) The head office of the ACFTU is in Beijing, capital of China. There are 31 provincial trade union federations, 10 national industrial unions and 1.324 million grassroots trade union organizations (in 2.753 million enterprises and institutions) affiliated to the ACFTU. The membership of the ACFTU totals 169.94 million (of which 61.778 million are women, accounting for 36.4% of the total number of union members, and 40.978 million are migrant workers, accounting for 24.1% of the total), the membership rate is 73.6%. There are 543,000 full-time trade union cadres and 4.568 million part-time cadres.
(According to figures released at the end of September 2006)
Source: http://english.acftu.org/template/10002/file.jsp?cid=63&aid=156]
First of all, let us make one point very clear. Our discussion here will remain limited to the role of ACFTU only in post-Mao China. Here though we have planned to cover the role of ACFTU only in respect of SOE workers, we have to keep in mind that since primarily we are going to deal with the policies of ACFTU during this phase, naturally many of these policies will remain more or less valid for workers of other sectors also.
Deng brought forward the reform measures with the slogan: "it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it can catch mice". We have made some discussion regarding this aspect in the 1st part of this article. In line with the economic reform measures, reforms in the role of ACFTU were also perceived since that time.
In 1988, documents were prepared for the "basic concept of union reform" for discussion at ACFTU's 11th National Congress. It was then proposed that unions must uphold unity of the government's authority, resolutely implement policies of Party and government, at the same time would participate in drafting government policies affecting workers' interests. It was also proposed that unions should act with greater autonomy, so that they can administer their own organizations on the basis of their charters and regulations.
In line with the government's reform measures on SOEs, it was then proposed: "When the legitimate interests of workers have been seriously violated, and settlement through the usual democratic grassroots channels is not possible, the unions must represent and support the masses by exposing violations, and leading workers in various kinds of lawful struggles. When localized conflicts break out, the union should stand by the masses, understand their feelings and grievances, and, without prejudice to state or long-term enterprise interests, urge the authorities and other parties to do all they can to satisfy legitimate worker demands... Unions should also persuade massed protestors to drop demands that are too onerous or pressing, allay friction and conflict, and maintain social stability and unity". It was also proposed at that time that union representatives including committee members should be chosen thru' direct and multi-candidate elections.
However, all these proposals failed to materialize with the emergence of Solidarity movement in Poland as well as democracy movement and independent union movement in China in 1989 & the Party had put all these reforms on hold. In this situation, in a speech to a meeting of ACFTU on 26 July, 1989, Jiang Zemin, the then newly appointed General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee stated in an unambiguous way: "The biggest concern is workers' economic grievances. If the workers rise up and rebel, we have a big problem. Trade union organizations must remain alert to any attempt to form [a Chinese equivalent of] Solidarity or similar political group." ("Correctly Understanding the Role of Trade Unions" ? Speech By Jiang Zemin, At The 11th ACFTU In Discussions At Third Expanded Chairman's Delegate Meeting). In tune with him, the then ACFTU Chairman Ni Zhifu stated at an executive committee meeting in December 1989 that unions should act with more political responsibility, take a pragmatic approach in their work and use every possible measure to stabilize workforce.
In 1992, Central Committee of CPC proposed the establishment of a "socialist market economy". In tune, soon government formulated"Regulations on Transforming the Operational Mechanism of State-owned Industrial Enterprises", & thus the road map for further reform and restructuring of SOEs were formulated. At this time, in the 12th National Congress in October 1993, ACFTU leadership outlined a working policybased on "a unified approach to promoting reform, improving productivity and protecting worker rights and interests."
In 1995, government announced that the SOE reform programme had entered a "critical" stage and to resolve the problems of SOEs, it would be necessary to adopt a strategy of "reducing personnel and increasing efficiency, redeploying redundant workers, standardizing bankruptcy procedures and encouraging mergers." Such a drastic measure soon led to laying off millions of SOEs employees and complete free hand to managers to appropriate state assets and to deprive workers in a most illegal way. And, whatever be the professed position, in reality ACFTU following Party directive did not come forward to defend SOE workers. At its 13th National Congress in October 1998 also, ACFTU continued same position of professingsomething & in reality functioning otherwise.
However, since this time, resentment of the SOE workers against the effects of the reforms had already started to surface. The position of ACFTU of de facto defending reform measures, at the same time handling resentment of the workers particularly that of SOE workers was becoming more and more confronting in nature. It becomes apparent from "Investigation and Thoughts on the Special Characteristics, Causes and Countermeasures for Dealing with the Rise in Workers' Spontaneous Collective Incidents", an internal document of 2001 of a local branch of ACFTU in the northeastern city of Qiqiha'er, Heilongjiang Province where "Special Characteristics of Workers' Spontaneous Collective Incidents" had been mentioned as:
"(a) The frequency of such incidents and the number of workers taking part continues to rise.
(b) They are increasingly well-organised and growing in scale. Most of the organisers are serving Party members and/or mid-level cadres who, in the wake of the initial problems, get involved in order to find a solution. At present, workers from single enterprises are contacting other enterprises to spread the dispute action.
© The duration of the incidents is increasing and it is getting more difficult to return matters to normal. Because it is not easy to eliminate the basic problems underlying the incidents, they can repeatedly break out at the same work unit and become a common occurrence.
(d) The type of people taking part is diversifying and becoming more complex. Previously, those taking part were retired or ordinary workers whereas now the incidents may include retired cadres, former enterprise managers and miscellaneous personnel.
(e) The mood of the incidents is becoming increasingly grave and opposition to the government is growing. Some workers are blaming the negative results of the market economy, enterprise losses and their own poverty completely at the door of the government. The destructive nature of these incidents is also increasing. Originally they consisted of collective petitions, sit-ins and appeals for help etc. but they now include blocking up roads, lying across railway tracks and worse."
(From Heilongjiang Federation of Trade Unions web-site: http://www.hljgh.org/html/ghtx/dcsk/dcsk_index.html , referred in the article of "ACFTU and Union Organizing", By Trini Leung.)
However, in the given situation, position taken by party regarding the role of ACFTU in 2001 thru' amendment of The Trade Union Law was in effect led to further alienation of ACFTU from the workers. Thru' this amendment, organizational control of the ACFTU by the party (Article 4) was further reaffirmed. Ban of any union organization outside ACFTU structure (Articles 10 and 11) was further strengthened.
Since beginning of 21st Century, a good number of struggles of SOE workers started to surface. Laid off/retired workers of different SOE started to take organized protest activities like strike, rail/road-blockade, mass demonstration etc & workers had no other option but to take this path alienating themselves from ACFTU ? sometimes electing independent "Workers Representative Congress" at factory-level, in some cases trying to form independent Trade Union. It has to keep in mind that most of these actions were legally not permissible in China. Naturally, all these started to appear as a threat to social and political stability to the Party and leaders.
How the struggling workers were viewing ACFTU at that time is glaringly revealed in an interview with a struggling worker of Daqing Oil (detail of which will be discussed later).
"Han Dong-fang: How does this provisional union committee compare to the official one?
Cadre: One is for workers, another for the capitalists. They are completely different. That's it.
Han: So this is a union belonging to the workers?
Cadre: Yes, this is a union of the workers.
Han: What about the other one?
Cadre: That is a union of the capitalists. The one belonging to the workers is called Committee of the Provisional Trade Union of Retrenched Workers of the DPAB".
[Interview was taken by Han Dong-fang of China Labour Bulletin & broadcasted on Radio Free Asia, 5 March, 2002]
It is not that all ACFTU cadres and officials, particularly at the shop floor/factory level, were always necessarily unsympathetic to the workers' cause. An official of the Liaoyang branch of ACFTU, when asked if local people were supporting the Ferroalloy workers' protests (detail of which has been discussed in the later part of this article), told Radio Free Asia, "Of course they are! The city leaders are in the wrong!" However, objectively these leaders had very little scope to influence higher level of leadership.
In any case, to counter this situation, at its 14th National Congress in 2003, the ACFTU had outlined a wide range of measures to protect workers' rights, though, in December 2005 the ACFTU promulgated the "Decision on Strengtheningthe Coordination of Labour Relations, Effectively Safeguarding Workers' Lawful Rights and Interests, and Promoting the Formation of a Socialist Harmonious Society", in which these measures were reduced to just six major initiatives ? "broad participation in government and legislative affairs; initiatives for co-ordinating grassroots labour relations; workers' democratic management; oversight of labour law compliance; early warning systems and measures to deal with labour disputes; and mechanisms to aid workers in difficulty". It was formulated in such a way that, direct participation of the factory level unions was kept limited only for two initiatives: "the coordination of grassroots-level labour relations" and so called "workers' democratic management". Rests were handed over to upper stratum of Union hierarchical structure. It may be explained here that according to hierarchy in ACFTU structure, unions exist at various levels, generally matching the administrative hierarchy: grass-root level, local government level, province (autonomous region) level, municipality and county level etc. Naturally, higher level unions are closer to Party members than independent suffering workers.
As the responsibility of looking after most of the measures to protect workers' rights and enhance labour-management relations were handed over higher level unions, plant level unions in the enterprise were further weakened & the union's proactive role was further relegated to serve & liaise with Party & government.
In early 2007, the union's activities were further eroded when the ACFTU developed its "five-faceted andunified" model to "protect the rights of the workers". The five facets were in order of importance: "leadership of the party, support of the government, cooperation of society, operation by the unions and participation by the workers." This five-faceted approach led to government functionaries taking over core union functions, and gave factory level ACFTU leaders a perfect excuse to abdicate its responsibilities to the Party and government. In fact, more & more local Party and government organisations are now increasingly managing activities that should be handled by the union.
Under these circumstances, all section of workers including SOE workers have been completely isolated with ACFTU & are further forced to take action by themselves. And such protests are not only disapproved, but also criticized by ACFTU leadership. Even in cases where workers' legal rights are violated & workers voice their protests, ACFTU do not offer protection as because party & government find these protests as conflict with party's political priorities of social stability and economic development.
B] Brief Report of some of the SOE workers' struggle
On 13 March 2001 more than 1,000 workers went on strike at the Guangyang Textile Factory in Sichuan province, demanding fresh negotiation over terms of their redundancy & non-submission of workers' pension funds for seven years neither by the government nor by their employer. Workers also blocked roads for two consecutive days. Huge Police force was sent, they clashed with & injured the workers, & finally number of workers was detained. Under this circumstance, workers were forced to call off the strike on 19 March without any gain.
In July 2001, 5,000 miners of Jishu Mine Bureau blocked the main Jilin - Harbin railway line for at least three days. Here, 7,500 miners had been laid off & while 23,300 workers were officially working, they were being paid irregularly & had to work in erratic shifts; some of the workers had not been paid their wages for as long as 30 months. The blockage of rail-line forced the local government to come up with funds to pay one month's wages, with promises of more, which were simply not materialized later.
In October 2001, several hundred women workers from the Daqing City Blanket Factory staged demonstrationsin front of the city mayor's offices, demanding fair redundancy compensation and a thorough investigation about corruption of the officials that led to bankruptcy of the company. Armed police were called to quell the protests and several female protesters were injured during clashes.
On 16 December 2001, 2000 workers of Shuangfeng Textile Factory in Dafeng occupied the factory & went for a strike against declaration of factory as "bankrupt" (though workers claimed that it was a fake bankruptcy) & signing of a new contract in which workers' salaries had been slashed by half. Here, striking workers were careful to avoid any activity that might have been treated as illegal or a challenge to the government. They refrained from chanting slogans, waving signs or hanging banners & simply sat in the factory and refused to work. As reported, here workers insisted neither they had any leader nor any organizational structure, as because, "as soon as we pick representatives, the police will arrest them," said one worker. However, it was found that a small group of workers were working behind the scenes to guide the movement. They used to remain mixed with the crowd, whispering messages only to those they could trust. Sometimes, they met on street corners, clamming up when strangers walked by. They drafted petitions and arranged for food to be delivered to those inside the factory. For the first few days of the strike, at the dead hour of the night, police officers, security guards & factory managers entered the mill and tried to pull the workers out & it was repeated first few nights. Thereafter, government tried to identify & arrest strike leaders ? video cameras were set up to record the in-comings and out-goings at the factory, undercover officers were sent in too. Within few days, police had been able to identify & arrest some leaders. Apparently worried that the strike might spread to other factories, police started to detain outside workers sympathetic to the strikers. On the fifth night of the strike, government sent a force including one military police unit to clear the factory & they began dragging workers out. Workers fought back and pushed them out of the factory. But the workers' victory was short-lived. From the next day, police started to arrest more & more struggling workers. It created an atmosphere of terror among the workers. Finally, on the night of Dec. 22, when number of workers inside the factory had reduced to about 400, police had finally been successful to force everyone out. Thereafter factory was locked out. Over the next several days, Company officials phoned/visited almost every worker, trying to persuade them to come back to work by promising that management would eventually return their money. Pay cut, however, would stand. On Dec. 27, 11 days after the strike began, workers finally started to return to work. "Yes, we lost," said one worker. "People are depressed and scared now. Anyone who speaks out is arrested, so no one dares say anything."
Sichuan Dongcai Insulating Material Enterprise, a company claimed to be producing the best insulating materials, proposed a restructuring program in 22 April 2003. More than 1,000 workers immediately launched a strike when they found out the restructuring was just a plan for the management to buy this profit-making SOE at a lower market price.
On 20 August 2003, 500 to 600 workers from Suizhou Fuel Pump and Nozzle Factory in Hubei Province protested outside the Suizhou Municipal Government demanding to solve the problems faced by workers after factory's bankruptcy. On 2 September, more than 700 workers took the same marching route to the government offices carrying banners, slogans and singing songs to protest.
On 18 and 19 November 2003, about 10,000 workers from the Xiangyang Automobile Bearing Company Ltd, Xiangfan City, blocked roads and railway lines demanding legal rights and interests of workers during privatization of the company. Soon, it led to violent clashes between workers & police. Several injuries were reported on both sides. On 19 November, at the entrance to the factory, a "Proclamation" was pasted on behalf of municipal public security bureau, listing names of nine male workers and one female worker from the factory whom police had identified as "criminal suspects" for their alleged role in leading the protest. The police proclamation ordered all these workers to report to the criminal investigation section of the local public security bureau within two days. On 20 November, the Hubei provincial governor and vice-governor went in person to negotiate with the striking workers, but no satisfactory agreement was reached. Workers withdrew the blockage, but refused to join in production. Final fate of this struggle could not find.
In July 2004, several thousand retired workersfrom more than ten former SOEs in Hangzhou began a series of demonstrations and sit-ins at local government offices that lasted till the end of 2006.
From 14 September till end of October 2004, almost 7,000 workers, mostly female, staged an unprecedented strike at Xianyang Textiles Factory, against the new management's attempt after purchasing of the SOE to impose harsh labour contracts and working conditions on the workforce. Here, more than twenty workers were detained by the police in October 2004. In late October, police issued a "wanted notice" against five workers claimed to have had contact with "foreign subversive elements." During the course of the struggle, striking workers had planned to elect a factory-level trade union and to register it with the officially-sanctioned trade union organization, the ACFTU, as allowed under China's Trade Union Law of 2001. When the city authorities heard this plan, they immediately announced that the ACFTU itself had already opened a union branch at the factory which had already been approved by the authorities. However, no workforce elections were called to legitimize this body, though many of the workers at the factory were insisting to elect a genuine union branch of their own. After this, first the new management agreed to accept two of the demands of the workers & thereafter, still when workers refused to withdraw the strike, police cracked down the strikers. The detained worker-leaders were finally released before the visit of Zhou Yongkang, the Minister of Public Security in late October 2004.
Several thousand workers at the Chengdu Engine Factory, a military enterprise, went on strikefrom July 11 to 15, 2005. Workers said they had expressed their dissatisfaction with the redundancy offer many times but management did not respond and they were left with no option but to strike.
During the restructuring of the Yibin Tianyuan chemical company in Sichuan, about 1,000 retired employees protested on numerous occasions about redundancy and pension payments. When the government refused to meet their demands, workers blocked the front gate of the factory on July 26, 2005. The Yibin public security authorities arrested four workers for the "crime of assembling to disturb social order". In April of 2006, District court in Yibin sentenced two workers to two years in prison, while one was suspended for two years, and another for one year. In July of 2006, the Intermediate People's Court of Yibin rejected the appeals, upholding original sentences.
The Chongqing Steel Company, formerly one of China's top 500 industrial companies, which at its height, employed more than 18,000 workers, was declared as"bankrupt" in July 2005. In August 12, 2005, several thousand employees blocked the streets in protest, demanding the redundancy payment of 2,000 yuan for each year of employment. The Chongqing Steel workers protests lasted from mid-August until early October 2005 when the workers' demands were rejected by the municipal government. On October 7, the local government mobilized several thousand police officers and took into custody the worker representatives who were picketing at the factory gates. Two women protesters were died in the attack & at least 24 workers & their family members were hurt. Several were arrested in the conflict.
On September 20, 2005, more than 10,000 laid-off workers from the Anshan Steel Group conducted a protestdemanding higher compensation and the restoration of jobs.
In early November of 2005, thousands of construction workers from four state-owned construction companies in Shenzhen protestedin the streets. The workers said that during the companies' restructuring early in the year, they had been promised compensation of over 40,000 yuan, whereas they only received 10,000 to 20,000 yuan.
On November 29, 2005, several thousand laid-off workers originally with the Shengli Oil Field blocked the oil field management offices for several days. Laid-off workers believed they had been cheated and demanded that management justify the layoffs or restore their jobs.
On March 6, 2006, three to four thousand workers of Kunming Municipal Textile group,once a SOE staged a four-day strike against plant's restructuring programme as well as workers' exclusion from the restructuring process. There are five companies in the group which employ more than 4,000 workers. Beginning on 13 March, workers at the various factories in the group downed tools, and gathered in front of the Yunnan Textile Plant, demanding to talk to management. Ms Zhou, one of the employees, said,"Those workers who currently work eight hours a day will now have to work 12 hours a day and that is to take effect immediately under the reform programme. Wages will not be increased but the work load expands a great deal, so many of the workers will petition the authorities, protesting against this arrangement."
On July 19, 2006, more than 200 laid-off employees from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)staged a sit-in protest in central Beijing outside of the offices of the ACFTU in Beijing, demanding their jobs back and protesting against the inadequate redundancy compensation they received. China's banking regulators on 18 July approved an application by the state-owned ICBC to seek a stock market listing, in which the bank hopes to raise a record US$ 19 billion, according to reports. Protestors were encircled by around 20 vans of policemen. Some police officers prevented bystanders from talking to the protestors. Protestors said that one of their fellow demonstrators had been beaten by the police earlier this week and suffered from internal bleeding and was hospitalized. The protestors complained that ACFTU had been ineffective in fighting for their rights. "They should be the workers' voice, but they are not even listening to us. They have never given us an answer on anything," Zou said. "We have no one to complain to."
More than 1,000 workers of QingyangCity Automobile Transportation Company besieged company's office building on 15 November, 2006. Nearly 2,000 workers were working in this factory. The local government was trying to restructure the company by privatization since 2001. However, the company's Workers' Representative Congress (WRC) objected to the restructuring plan for five times. Local authorities ordered to halt WRC and sold the company to a Shaanxi-based company in September 2006. Since October, the local authorities forced 1,448 workers to sign an agreement to be laid off. Workers were not satisfied with the compensation. Some workers who signed the agreement could not get the money when they went to the bank. They were told there was no money in the account. The workers then realised that they were tricked by the authorities. On 13 November, the workers went to the government working group of the restructuring plan and demand an explanation in two days. Without getting any reply, more than 1,000 workers went to besiege the company's office building on 15 November.
C] Struggle of the Zhengzhou Paper Factory (SOE) Workers
Since early 1990s in Zhengzhou, the Provincial capital city of Henan, condition of at least 40 small & medium sized SOEs factories deteriorated and massive shutdowns and mass layoffs started with a motive to mass-scale privatization. Initially, workers thought that taking over their SOEs by the ?private' companies would save their jobs; as a result, there was little organized resistance to defend workers' interests.
But within a very short period, some sort of protest activity started to take place. Still at that time, though condition of workers were becoming increasingly desperate, organized protests & resistances were very few in numbers.
However, incidents in Zhengzhou Paper Factory took a different turn. Here workers occupied the factory and demanded the right to take direct control of their factory and to run it democratically. As a result, this struggle immediately drew attention to the workers, labour activists, and intellectuals in China and abroad.
Zhengzhou Paper factory was established in 1958. However, the crisis began in 1995 when the factory was ordered to temporarily halt production, except for 3 workshops that were rented out to private businesses. Over 80% of the original workforce was out of work. Finally, in 1997, among a good number of companies, Fenhua Inc. was finally decided to take over Zhengzhou. Fenhua promised to revive production and restore all workers with payment of full back wages and pension obligations. After 8 months of waiting, the merger agreement was finally approved by the Light Industry Ministry & Zhengzhou Paper was officially declared as one of Fenhua's subsidiary companies.
However, since taking over of the factory, Fenhua management did not go for settling workers' dues for a long time; ultimately, in May 2000 they brought forth the proposal of allowing them to sell the land of the factory as a the precondition of paying workers' back wages & other dues. By June, 2000 it became apparent to the workers as well as to the Workers' Representatives Congress (WRC) leaders that Fenhua's original intention to take over Zhengzhou Paper was not to run it profitably; on the other hand, they have planned to make a huge profit by selling the land to real estate developers. Meanwhile workers petitioned to the government officials over thirty times since the merger, with no change in the situation. Workers also started to realise that old WRC would never address their problem, so they finally went for election of WRC & elected a new independent WRC. On June 7, 2000 the workers under the leadership of new WRC occupied the factory, raised the demand to return ownership of the Zhengzhou Paper back to the WRC; workers had been able to keep Fenhua representatives out of factory and collected rent payments from the one workshop that was still in production. It continued till August 8, 2000.
Initially local government authorities took the line of ?wait & watch' policy. Finally, on August 7, 2000 two workers' leaders were arrested. On 8th Fenhua representatives for the first time since occupation of the factory by the workers, had been able to enter the factory with the help of huge police contingent, to retrieve locked files and to damage documentary evidences of their wrongdoing since the merger. During this course, police detained and questioned some 40 workers. In September, local government ordered Zhengzhou Paper workers to hold new elections of their WRC. The workers re-elected the two worker leaders who were in jail at the time. The WRC continued their organized activity for the demand of the immediate release of the two leaders and the return of the ownership right of the factory to the WRC. Finally, in March, 2001 government agreed to turn over ownership rights to the WRC, nullifying Fenhua's ownership of Zhengzhou Paper.
According to some ardent observers of Zhengzhou Paper workers' struggle, the most important factor that helped Zhengzhou Paper workers to take the decision of taking over the factory was that the worker-leaders received considerable support & advice from former ?rebels' active in the Cultural Revolution and subsequently been imprisoned and/or kicked out of the Party during Deng era.
In any case, once taking over is complete, the most significant problem that Zhengzhou Paper workers started to face immediately was the handling of outstanding debts of the factory that had been caused by the old corrupt managers. Government was also not at all interested to provide necessary capital support to this independent WRC. So, having in a fix of not knowing where to find the necessary capital to invest in production, some of the worker-leaders started to strive for corporate shareholding of the factory. As stated by the Chairman of Zhangzhou Paper independent WRC in Nov 2000 in an interview to Stephen Phillion, a sociologist made some serious study of the struggle of the SOE workers of China against privatization, "We'd like to convert the company to a shareholding firm to receive financing for the enterprise once we've revived production. Of course we would like to secure funding from the state, but we recognize that there is no way we will be a candidate for that given our size and past history of debt. Our main obstacle right now is that we can't claim the factory as ours, therefore little progress can be made in protecting the workers' rights to subsist".
However, this very idea of procuring private stocks as a mean to accumulate capital had led to the demise of a struggle which brought forth a potential of a new alternative to the resistance struggle of the SOE workers against the privatization programme of the ruling class of capitalist China. Though some of the observers have identified personality clashes as a main drive for demise of this struggle, an excerpt from an interview of a labour activist well-connected with the Zhengzhou Paper WRC identified the problem otherwise:
"Many regarded the WRC's internal battles as a result of personality clashes. That certainly had something to do with it. But there was more to it than met the eye. Instead of turning to the workers to debate and decide on different options, they took it upon themselves to find outside sources of capital and invariably that led to WRC representatives identifying with the goal of bringing in private investors instead of strengthening their bond with workers.While I advocated strongly for making the issues known to the workers and letting them debate what route to go, in the end the representatives went each their own way frantically trying to win outsiders' interest in the factory and not involving workers in that process. This is what really led to the failure of the WRC to carry through their original plan to implement worker control of the factory after taking it back from the fraudulent ?private capitalists' who stole it from them". (August 2005 interview by Stephen Phillion with activist Lai, Beijing)
Another aspect of the failure of the Zhengzhou Paper WRC, as identified by Stephen Phillion, was "the politicized orientation of older local cultural revolutionaries who were interested in establishing a relationship with the various SOE workers' leaders who organized collective actions against fraudulent privatization in Zhengzhou from 1999 onward". According to the above interview:
"Their interests were in building their own social movement, primarily by encouraging workers' leaders to join their Mao Anniversary Movement. There's no better gift to the police than to politicize the workers' movement in this fashion; it gives them the perfect excuse to round up workers' leaders. At a time when leaders are needed to develop the base of the workers' movement, their potential is wasted in jail and the general public comes to associate the workers' protests with taboo political causes, which they naturally fear" (Ibid).
Here, a completely separate incident, apparently unrelated to Paper Factory struggle, may be referred here to understand the activities of the Cultural Revolutionaries marked as ?rebels' in Zhengzhou area.
Since last few years, on the Death Anniversary of Mao on September 9, many people in Zhengzhou would gather before Mao's statue in the Zijinshan Square, to pay tribute to Mao's memory by laying wreaths or reciting poems. Each year there would be a massive police presence, which inevitably would lead to incidents of confrontation and arrest. However, during the peak year of the Paper Factory struggle a crowd again gathered on September 9; this year the event was relatively peaceful. But, a local resident, Mr. Zhang Zhengyao, 56, was taken into police custody around 10:00 am, apparently because he was distributing leaflets. Originally, it was nothing but copies of a commemorative piece, titled Mao Forever Our Leader, specifically written for this occasion. On September 10, police took Zhang back to his apartment in handcuffs to conduct a search; they took away his computer, the remaining copies of the commemorative piece and other documents. Subsequently, Zhang Ruquan, 69, was also detained & Mr Wang Zhanqing & Ms Ge Liying, wife of Zhang Zhengyao, were kept under surveillance. Mr Zhanqing has been detained for allegedly arranging the printing of the leaflets; Mr Ruquan allegedly had penned the commemorative piece and Ms. Ge was said to have posted it on an internet Maoist website, Mao Zedong Flag. On December 21, 2004 the scheduled trial took place in a closed session. Many people including some from other parts of China attended the trial on that day as an expression of solidarity, but were unable to get in. In the trial, Zhang Zhengyao and Zhang Ruquan were both found guilty of libel and each given a three-year prison sentence .
The particular incident makes it amply clear that Cultural Revolution ?rebels' had a strong presence in the Zhangzhou area & they were trying to raise their independent political voice against the existing regime of China in their own way. In this respect, it may be recollected that Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan was the place where the workers' movement was ?born' & got a heavy blow in 1927 massacre. During the Cultural Revolution, revolutionaries were very much active in Zhengzhou & in the early post-1978 years experienced a heavy expulsion from the then CCP. However, if we identify the error made at the Zhangzhou Paper Factory struggle merely due to "politicized orientation" of the Cultural Revolution ?rebels', we would rush towards the error of oversimplification, as because in another interview of a number of these activists taken by Phillion himself, another aspect of the objective reality also comes to the surface.
"In the midst of this conversation, I couldn't resist asking why it took so long for workers leaders to come up with such a plan or, for that matter, why there weren't more activists in China who would come up with such ideas, daring to find ways around the ?laws' against collective coordination of factory protests:
Activist 1: You have to understand that for us also this way of protesting is relatively new. We were very enthusiastic to join the Cultural Revolution to engage in political struggles, but we really were not in a position to do much in the way of actual organization of workers. (...) This is really something new to us basically.
Me: You never did this kind of organizing during the CR (Cultural Revolution)?
Activist 2: Essentially, no. (...)
Activist 1: Also, you have to realize that the workers leaders, although many of them grew up during the CR, are not really that politicized. They tend to be more skilled and educated members of the working class, more inclined to still have faith in Party leaders or to want to appeal to them at least."
However, the outcome of the struggle at Zhengzhou Paper Factory forming an independent WRC had special import for other SOE WRCs in Zhengzhou, insofar as it brought forth an alternative to the general nationwide perception of SOE workers' overall defeat or resigned acceptance of future privatization. As reflected thru' the version of a workers' leader fighting the privatization of the Yibiao Air Conditioner Factory declared to a fellow worker leader during an exchange, this expression clearly took place:
"Mr. Jiang: All along they've been able to do as they want regardless of what the WRC said.
Mr. Yang: Well, isn't that the point? It's your factory. How can it be run in workers interests if workers can't even speak what they think, control what happens when managers make decisions? Who's factory is it anyhow?
Mr. Jiang: Goddamnit! This is what it all comes down to; what we are doing now is what we should have been doing years ago, organizing a real WRC that is actively involved in factory matters, the whole factory.This we must do better in the future, our lives, our jobs hinge on our abilities to do so". (Interview by Stephen Phillion with a worker leader, Air Conditioner Factory, Zhengzhou, September 2000).
In another interview another worker leader expressed this alternative in a much more emphatic way:
"We know that the only way we can remain strong is to keep our WRC independent and responsible to the workers. We only have power if they are active in the decision making in the future. That is what we have that those who want to take away our factory don't enjoy. If we don't keep that as our fundamental means for fighting for our rights, we will have nothing. That means this factory is truly the workers' factory and what they decide is what goes" (Interview by Stephen Phillion with Workers' Leader Lin, Zhengzhou Paper Factory, November, 2000).
Finally, in opposition to the conclusions of Robert Well made in his article "Conditions of the Working Classes in China" published in ?Monthly Review', "Stepehen Phillion & Chi Hua brought forward some interesting observation about the lessons of Zhangzhou Paper Factory struggle, which, most probably are more significant & closer to the reality. They have concluded:
"What we believe is the significant lesson to be drawn from failures such as the Paper Mill struggle is not that the working class in China is too divided and thus easily conquerable [albeit that is a real issue and the cleavages Weil draws out are very helpful]. Instead, there are also ideological differences over what the priorities of organizing a new left in China should be, i.e. what is its heart of the growth of a new left presence in China: workers' collective self-organization [and here we plainly are not merely referring to the liberal goal of free trade unions] or street protests that garner attention in the short-term in the western [mainstream and left] media? The propensity toward the latter among the older left in China, shaped greatly by its Cultural Revolution experience, is, we would argue, one that has not given enough attention to what it means to organize China's working class.
(...) We believe, given what we've seen of organizing campaigns such as those that have occurred among Zhengzhou's state workers and elsewhere, that leftist organizing in China [to the extent it's possible in a one-party state deeply committed to restructuring markets in line with the needs of global investors] needs to be more organically tied to actual forms of strong workers' self-organization [especially in the state sector where the ideological adherence to socialist goals remains highest among China's working class] that have more than clarion calls for demonstrations and attention in headlines abroad as their basis for the Chinese left's expansion. We know that such thinking and rethinking of what it means to organize a left in China is occurring among this generation of Chinese Marxists and will continue into the future. We also suspect it is where the hope for a regeneration of China's left as a powerful presence in Chinese society, one day able to actually take real power, is centred."
In any case, Zhangzhou Paper Factory workers struggle brought forth some significant aspects:
(a) Prior to this struggle, struggle of the SOE workers were basically limited within the arena of resigned acceptance of privatization policy. But here, for the first time, struggle surfaced against the privatization policy of the Government, though in a plant level. Not only this, here workers had been able to revert back the ownership right handed over to Fenhua Corp by the Government.
(b) As part of this struggle, workers openly rebelled against local Union & Party leaders & elected independent WRC. This is particularly significant in absence of having the legal right of the workers forming an independent Trade Union. It is much more significant as the struggling workers wanted to see the independent WRC duly elected by them as an alternative organ to protect themselves from the corruption & high-handed characters of the Party cadres & factory managers. It is also found subsequently that Zhangzhou Paper workers line of electing independent WRC as part of struggle of the SOE workers against the attack of the government inspired other SOE workers to take this line, struggle of the Yibiao Air Conditioner Factory referred earlier may be taken as a specific example.
© The experiment of running the factory by the workers' co-operative failed. Along with taking over the factory, workers had to take over outstanding debts of the factory caused by the old corrupt managers. They also found that Government was also not at all interested to provide necessary capital support to this independent WRC. So, since beginning of taking over the factory, the basic problem workers had to face was the non-availability of necessary capital to invest in production & to run the factory. Though inability of the worker-leaders to resolve this problem led to the demise of the struggle, the struggle itself brought forth number of pertinent questions, which also led to debates (particularly on what should be Left's role in workers' movement) among the worker-activists.
(d) In this struggle ?rebel' communists of Cultural Revolution era took an active part & tried to play a significant role.
(e) In addition, among the worker-leaders it brought forth the aspiration, whether rightly perceived or not is altogether a different question, of preserving socialist values against market-dominant ones. However, definitely it met a definite limit to implement this perception, finally, as because the struggle of the Zhangzhou Paper Factory workers was basically an economic in nature.
D] Struggle of the The Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory Workers during 2002-03
The demonstrations in 2002 by thousands of Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy and other local factory workers were not a spontaneous outbreak. It was the culmination of a series of frustrated attempts by the workers to draw the attention of the government to their complaints and demands. Unfortunately, the Liaoyang movement shows how an economic issue of the workers turned into a high-level political confrontation, which in effect vividly reflects the extremely abusive attitude of the Govt of China & CCP to the legitimate grievances of the workers.
Liaoning Province, where the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory was situated, had the highest number of SOE employees in China, and therefore also the largest number of retrenched and retired SOE workers in the country. The Ferro-Alloy Factory was developed into a medium-sized SOE in the 1950s. It started to face financial difficulties since 1990s. In 1995, a new official, Fan Yicheng, was appointed as the plant's Party Secretary and Director & in collusion with Gong Shangwu, the former mayor and Party Secretary of Liaoyang city, he introduced measures to spin off several production lines into independent companies.
Soon, Fan was accused of misappropriating over Rmb 100 million yuan from Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory. On the other hand, he stopped paying contributions to the plant's pension and medical funds. Then in late 2001, Fan Yicheng planned a heinous move to declare Ferro Alloy Factory as bankrupt, so that assets of the factory could be sold in a throwaway price & workers could be deprived of their dues. According to Bankruptcy Law in China, the decision of a plant's Workers Representative Congress (WRC) is required before a SOE can apply for bankruptcy and closure. Accordingly, Fan convened a meeting of WRC to vote on his bankruptcy proposal. Meanwhile, since 1998, workers of Ferro-Alloy were demanding to investigate the on-going corruption and malpractices by the factory's senior management, and to provide the workers all the dues. However, it was not yielding any effective result. Finally, once the bankruptcy proposal came to the surface, workers elected their own independent WRC.Fan was conscious of this move of the workers & apprehended that they would not approve the proposal of bankruptcy; so he made an elabourate arrangement to foil any opposition of the workers. Accordingly, prior to the day of the meeting, police detained three representatives of the workers; on the day of the meeting, more than 500 riot police were deployed in front of the factory; plain-clothes police officers were posted in each of the thirteen areas where voting was to take place; workers were barred from even entering into the factory. In this way, management's bankruptcy proposal was "approved" thru' a mock WRC meeting & the factory was formally declared insolvent on 5 November, 2001. Subsequently, several constituent parts of the factory were sold to contractors closely linked to Fan Yicheng and also to various local government leaders. At the other end, it made more than 3000 workers jobless with many months of unpaid wage arrears & without any pension or unemployment benefits.
During the course, elected representatives of WRC moved to all the relevant official bodies without yielding any result. So, they resolved to take their demands to the streets. Between October and December 2001, they staged three public protest marches, each involving between 1,000 and 3,000 demonstrators. Still the government made no response.
On 5 March, 2002, the protesting Ferro-Alloy workers published four open letters. One was addressed to the President Jiang Zemin; one to the provincial governor of Liaoning, Bo Xilai; one to the Party committee and government of Liaoyang; and another to the city's workers and citizens.
On the morning of 11 March 2002, Ferro-Alloy workers along with several thousand workers of other affected factories like Liaoyang Textile Factory, Liaoyang Piston Factory, Liaoyang Instruments Factory, Liaoyang Leather Factory and Liaoyang Precision Tool Factory marched in the streets to protest against their plants' closure and to demand the resignation of Gong Shangwu, former mayor and Party Secretary of Liaoyang city. Demonstrators first went to the Liaoyang court and demanded that the chief judge and chief Procurator should come out and explain what they were doing to reduce corruption in the city. No official emerged. Workers then marched to the city's People's Congress Office to demand Gong's resignation. Then, they rallied to the city government headquarters. Government officials offered to meet with the workers' representatives; but the protesters replied that they had already lost faith in the local government and would only negotiate with senior officials from the provincial-level or central government. This first demonstration was not interfered with by the police and so there were no injuries or detentions.
On the following day, a 12-member delegation of leading officials met with the workers representatives. In this meeting, Deputy-Mayor Chen Qiang, promised the workers that their complaints would be looked into by the government; he assured that no arrests of workers' representatives would occur. In addition, workers were promised that the city government had allocated Rmb 4.4 million in order to pay back their cumulative wage arrears.
But, within five days of this meeting, government broke its promise. On 17 March, Yao Fuxin, one of the workers' leaders, was secretly detained by the Public Security Bureau (PSB). On 20 March, when workers were demonstrating against Yao's arrest, three other representatives, Xiao Yunliang, Wang Zhaoming and Pang Qingxiang, were detained.All but Yao were laid-off workers from the Ferro-Alloy Factory; Yao Fuxin was a laid-off worker from the Liaoyang Rolled Steel Factory. On 30 March, the families of the four detainees were notified by the Liaoyang PSB that their relatives had been formally arrested the previous day.
On 21 March, during a third demonstration demanding the release of their four detained representatives, two more workers were taken into custody by the police. One was Guo Suxiang (52), wife of the detained Pang Qingxiang; the other was a worker from a Liaoyang fabric factory who had merely asked the police on what grounds they had arrested Guo Suxiang. Both were reportedly released shortly afterwards.
Soon after the 21 March demonstration, in order to avoid further arrests, workers temporarily decided to suspend public protests, and sent some representatives to negotiate with the government for the release of detained leaders. Side by side, since police was hunting down other workers' representatives, they were forced to go into hiding. On 16 April, Gu Baoshu, another worker leader was arrested by police. When several workers started demonstrating against this arrest & threatened that if Gu Baoshu was not promptly released, they would either carry out a collective petitioning & visit to Beijing or else they would blockade the railway line. Gu was released by the PSB later that evening.
Over the next few months, the Liaoyang workers continued demonstrations for the release of the four detained representatives. They applied to PSB for permission to conduct public protest marches but were always turned down. On 8 May, about 20 workers took the bold step of personally signing their names on an application to the PSB for permission to demonstrate. It was again rejected, but the workers held their rally.
In the months following the initial mass protests, the government took significant steps towards meeting some of the economic demands raised by the Ferro-Alloy Factory workers. Some medical expenses were eventually reimbursed, salaries in arrears began to be paid in installments, and the workers' pension & insurance cards were issued. Side by side, harassment of the worker leaders continued. ACFTU also took a hard line stance against the struggle. In June, 2002, a spokesperson for the ACFTU stated at the annual conference of the ILO in Geneva that the four Liaoyang detainees had been arrested not merely for "illegally demonstrating", but also because they had "burned cars and destroyed public property". The same was corroborated in a harsher manner by the Chinese government in a reply to ILO, where it was clearly stated that the four workers' leaders had "jointly carried out planned activities of terrorism and sabotage." At the same time, a complete news blockade on any coverage of the Liaoyang events was made by Government in China.
At the same time, Fan Yicheng, Party Secretary as well as Director of the Plant, was finally arrested at the end of July, 2002 & was put on trial one month later. Other associates of Fan were also arrested. In due course, Fan was found guilty on three criminal counts of "dereliction of duty, causing loss of state-owned property, and smuggling in ordinary goods" & was sentenced imprisonment for 13 years. His associates were also found guilty & sentenced imprisonment.
However, the trial & punishment of Fan Yicheng & his associates, whatever be its severity, could not dissuade the deep anger perpetrated in the jobless & starved Liaoyang workers. At the same time, by bringing charges against Yao Fuxin & Xiao Yunliang, government sent the message to the struggling workers clear & unambiguous that they were treating Yao Fuxin & other worker leaders at per with Fan Yicheng & his associates. It made their determination stronger to fight for the release of their leaders in a more consistent way.
So, in early November, about a week before the opening of the CCP's 16th Congress in Beijing, workers published three "Open Letters", signed in the names of "Party Members," "Young Workers" and "Retired Workers" respectively & pasted its copies in different surrounding working class area.Thru' these letters they appealed to citizens to gather in front of the city government offices on 4, 5 and 6 November to demand the release of the four detained workers' representatives. At the same time, in these letters, they raised the demands of issuing unemployment allowances and welfare subsidies, and reinstatement of long-overdue and now officially canceled heating subsidies.
On 5 and 6 November, few thousand unemployed workers of Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory, Liaoyang Steel Rolling Mill, Liaoyang Canning Factory & Liaoyang Textile Factory demonstrated in city government offices for these demands.They waved protest banners carrying slogans: "Welcome the Party's 16th Congress" and "What Crimes did the ?Liaoyang Four' Commit?" Both demonstrations were eventually broken up and dispersed by the police. But, subsequently, on 20 December, Wang Zhaoming and Pang Qingxiang, two of the worker-leaders were released & all criminal charges against them were dropped.So the Liaoyang Four now became the "Liaoyang Two": Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang.
Finally, on 15 January, 2003 Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang were brought to trial; charges against them were "illegal assembly and demonstration" and the political charge of "subversion." The principle offenses listed in the indictment against them under the heading of "subversion" were, first, their alleged membership of the outlawed China Democracy Party (CDP) and, second, their alleged contacts and communication with foreign journalists and "hostile elements." In addition, they were charged with instigating unlawful assemblies and demonstrations among the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy workers in February and March 2002 and thereby disturbing public order. The government prosecutors summoned no witnesses to support any of these charges, thereby depriving defense lawyers of the opportunity to cross-examine them and refute the state's evidence.
Despite heavy police deployments and sub-zero wintry winds, several hundred Liaoyang workers showed up outside the courthouse on the morning of the trial to register their protest. "
In their defense, the Liaoyang Two pleaded innocent to all charges against them. Yao Fuxin admitted that he had attended a couple of CDP meetings in 1998, but decided not to join the party following a discussion of its constitution. On the question of his alleged criminal contact with the news media, Yao said that he initially tried to contact several domestic press including both the Liaoyang Daily and the Liaoning Provincial Daily to publicize the workers' movement in Liaoyang. But he was told any journalists who tried to report on the case would lose their jobs. Left with no other choice, he had then contacted foreign journalists in the hope that they would help publicise the Liaoyang workers' case and thereby bring it to the attention of China's central authorities.
The Liaoyang Two also pointed out that in the four open letters issued by the Ferro-Alloy workers, which Yao helped to draft, it was clearly stated that the protesters supported both the government of Jiang Zemin and the President's policies on "the three represents," which the government had recently been promoting as its core policy.
In an impassioned statement to the court frequently interrupted by the judges, Yao asserted that all his actions during the protest movement had been only for the reason that he was simply unable to watch tamely the sufferings of his fellow workers. At the end of his speech, Yao reportedly broke down in tears.
Despite the official warning, workers continued to show firm solidarity with the two detainees and to demand of their release. On 27 February, a group of fifteen Liaoyang workers' representatives met for around three hours with Chen Qiang, the deputy mayor, and other senior municipal officials to appeal again for the release of Yao and Xiao and to discuss other workers' issues.
Other main demand raised by this team to Chen Qiang was to fulfil the economic responsibilities to the factory's laid-off and redundant workforce. He agreed to meet some of their demands like wage arrears etc in full before the end of June. On the vital issue of pensions & two years arrear unemployment welfare benefits, Chen confessed that he was "powerless to resolve this issue." In an unusually candid admission of how grave the situation for unemployed workers in China's northeast has now become, Chen informed the workers representatives: "There are currently several dozen bankrupt enterprises in Liaoning Province where the workers have still received no unemployment welfare benefit. If the workers from any one of these enterprises receive unemployment benefit, I assure you that the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Plant's workforce will also receive theirs."
In the run-up to the first anniversary of the mass protest by over 10,000 workers in Liaoyang on 11 March 2003, the Chinese security authorities undertook a further series of clumsy and repressive measures against the families of Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang.
On 9 May 2003, the Liaoyang Intermediate Court announced that Yao was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and Xiao to four years' imprisonment.Yao & Xiao both lodged appeals; on 27 June 2003 it was announced that the appeals of both men had been rejected & original sentences were upheld. The decision to dismiss the appeals was taken at a secret hearing lasting less than 30 minutes at the Liaoyang City Detention Centre where both men are being held. Both families were denied access to the hearing and neither of the two men's lawyers was present.
Rejection of the appeals had come as a heavy blow to the families of Yao and Xiao & to the thousands of workers in Liaoyang. Despite the trial and sentencing of the two men and the rejection of their appeals, workers continued to visit the family homes of Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang to show their continued solidarity and support. However, Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy workers' struggle slowly subsided, it was marked as a lost struggle, but it could create a deep bruise among of struggling Chinese SOE workers.
According to the report of Trini Leung, "The Ferroalloy workers continued for several months to organize regular demonstrations demanding the government release their representatives and respond to their calls for investigation into corruption in their enterprise and in the local government. The main strength of the Liaoyang protests lies in their high level of organization which unites the plant's workers around an open leadership. In this sense the Liaoyang Ferroalloy Factory workers have organized the most successful archetype of an independent union in China since 1949."
Recently on 16 March, 2009 Yao Fuxin has been released from prison. But still he has to serve another three years as deprived of political rights, including the freedoms of speech, assembly and association, which practically mean he will have to remain under continual surveillance, prevented from speaking publicly about his case.
E] Daqing Oilfield Worker' Struggle in 2002
Oil was discovered in the Daqing area in 1958, at the time when China was 90 percent dependent on imported oil. Oil production began since 1960 & soon it became a major silver lining in the industrialization process during Mao era. At that time, Mao himself embraced the slogan: "In industry, learn from Daqing." During mid-1970s, oil production had reached fifty million metric tons, & this level of production continued up to mid-1990s. Till this period, Daqing, with over 26,000 wells, remained one of the largest oil fields in the world. However, as part of the reform policy, again import of oil started to increase rapidly since early 1990s; by 2001, 30 percent of China's oil was imported. At the same time, in 1998 whole of China's oil fields were assigned among two vertically integrated state-owned corporations, the China National Petroleum Corporation and the China Petrochemical Corporation, among which Daqing oil field was assigned to CNPC. In early 2000, CNPC went a step further. As part of plans to list on the Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges, CNPC transferred most of its high quality domestic assets into a subsidiary named PetroChina which became the parent company of the Daqing Oil Company Ltd. The initial public offering (IPO) of PetroChina went ahead in April 2000. So, finally at the end of 1990s, all these changes as well as drying up of some wells and lower international oil prices led to rapid fall of production and large number of Daqing workmen, once proclaimed as the "iron men" of China's economy, were made redundant & laid off. According to one figure, by January 2001, a huge number of 38,000 were laid off, which rose up to 86,000 by March 2002, as reported By Damien McElroy in "The Telegraph" (Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1388318/Chinese-police-face-iron-men.html).
On November 7-8, 2000, Daqing Oil issued two documents that outlined the severance agreement offered to laid-off employees. According to Daqing workers, this agreement was not acceptable to them, but they were forced to sign it. It was not the amount of money that angered workers. Rather, they were aggrieved as because the relevant points of the agreement were not explained to them before it was finalized & signed. Their deep anger was clearly expressed in the banners they unfurled during the struggle: "We don't want to be tricked again!" "Give me my job back!" Not only that, once it was signed, its different clauses like the conditions of the payment of pension and insurance premiums were subsequently altered unilaterally, which virtually put laid-off workers on the verge of poverty. Finally on February 12, 2002 Daqing management further announced that it would no longer pay heating allowances & it became the final straw on the back of the poverty-stricken workers & soon they come forward with the heroic struggle that immediately drew the attention of struggling workers across the world.
March 1 was the day when Daqing workers struggle had first come to surface. On that day, some 3,000 former oil workers marched to Daqing Oil headquarters under the banner of an independent labour organization, the "Daqing Petroleum Administration Bureau Retrenched Workers' Provisional Union Committee (DRWPU)". Despite the media blackout, soon protests spread to oil fields in Xinjiang, Liaoning, and Hebei provinces. More than 50,000 workers staged demonstrations at Daqing Oil headquarters on March 4. Interviews taken at that time by Han Dongfang of China Labour Bulletin are given below to get a living picture about happenings of first few days' incidents.
Interview 1, taken on March 4
"Cadre: It has been [going on for] four or five days. There were fewer people at the beginning, about two or three thousand people. From yesterday, the number has swelled to more than 50,000.
Han: Are they still gathering there today?
Cadre: Yes, they are still in the square. (...) They are waiting for them [the management] to come out with a reply. But their leaders [DPAB] still haven't shown up. (...) My wife is one of the retrenched workers.
Han: How is her situation?
Cadre: She is for sure unhappy! At the beginning it was written in the agreement that the retrenched workers would be treated the same way as the employed workers. Take their heating fee for instance, after their retrenchment; it would still be paid for by the DPAB. However, beginning this year, they have stopped their payment. You will have to pay your own! (...) This is one reason [causing the protests]. Another reason is that the retrenchment agreement stipulates that every individual retrenched worker would pay RMB 2,600 a year as their social labour insurance contribution to the insurance company. But the fee went up to RMB 3,600 last year, and up again to over RMB 4,000 this year."
Interview 2, taken on same day
An officer from the Ranghulu branch of the Public Security Bureau said that,
"Officer: As far as I know, according to our information, if no reply were given in these three or four days, I'm afraid they would go to block the railway lines at Ranghu Rail Station. There are over 80,000 workers. More than 70,000 are from the Daqing PAB, and over 10,000 from the Petroleum Corp. There are altogether over 80,000 workers! Tens of thousands of families are involved. (...) It doesn't only concern the stability of Daqing. It's a question for all the oilfields across the country. For example, Xinjiang, Shengli and Liaohe. All the oilfields in the country have retrenched workers.
Han: So they all face similar problems.
Officer: They all have similar problems. They are all beginning to act in support of Daqing [action]. I've heard that there are troubles [over there] too. (?) I heard the retrenched workers [at Daqing] said that trouble had also started in Xinjiang and other oilfields. (...) The military police and the tank regiment troops have come.
Han: A tank regiment?
Officer: Yes, loads of people at the square!
Han: So can this matter be solved in the next few days?
Officer: It doesn't look very likely from the current situation. (...)"
Interview 3, taken on March 5
In another interview, the chairman of the DPAB Trade Union revealed some more interesting aspects regarding the attitude of the central leadership of ACFTU & Party about this struggle.
"Chairman: We cannot intervene in anything. Those members of the local party committee are holding meetings to examine the case. How can we intervene? (... ) I have to follow the orders given by our party committee.
Han: What was the order?
Chairman: The party committee demands a unitary line. We cannot say things without caution.
Han: Yet, yesterday, the president of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), Wei Jianxing, just spoke at the annual session of the CPPCC and asked the trade unions to stand up to defend workers' rights at situation like this?
Chairman: Stand up and speaking out for them? Are they still workers? Their contracts have terminated. They have nothing to do with the enterprise. They are unemployed. What kind of workers are they?(...)
Han: But if the demands of the workers are reasonable, why wouldn't the union help them?
Chairman: There is nothing reasonable there. I cannot help them.
Han: Is there really nothing reasonable?
Chairman: Reasonable or not, you should take the question to the Beijing headquarters. (...) The petroleum industry involves not only one area. Actually 400,000 workers have been retrenched. 400,000! It is not just the business of Daqing Oilfield. It happens to every oilfield all over China! The policies are made by the Beijing headquarters, not us. (...) This is all the business of the leaders. (...) If you would like to discuss these in depths, go ask the ACFTU in Beijing. These problems have been studied long time ago. It's not something which just happens this year. The re-structuring has been completed now. The company has been listed in the stock market already. What can you say? They are not happy? The [retrenchment] agreement has been signed anyway, what else could they say?"
Interview 4, taken on March 7
In another interview with an official of Shengli Oilfield Complaints Office reflected that they were also apprehending unrest among their retrenched workers in line with Daqing workers.
"Official: Some recently retrenched workers petitioned here before the Chinese New Year. (?)
Official: Yes, because of the Chinese New Year bonus. Since they have no connection with the enterprise, the enterprise did not pay them a bonus. That was the problem. (?)
Han: How many retrenched workers do you have there?
Official: There are over 10,000. The communication is so well developed now; the news of Daqing can get here very fast. Now it is stable here. But who knows what will happen when the news of Daqinq get here.
Han: Do you mean that potentially there is a problem because of Daqing?
Official: Yes. It is hard to tell what these present factors will become, given what happened in Daqing."
Interview 6, taken on March 10
This interview was taken by Han of an official of the DPAB.
"Han: About how many people were there?
Official: Quite a lot. Today there were a lot of people.
Han: More than last Monday? Last Monday there were over 50,000 people, though.
Official: It's about the same. They are still there. (...)
Han: Everything is jammed? Where do these people take up their activities now?
Official: They are everywhere. In the courtyard, outside the courtyard, on the square, on Tieren Square. (...)
Han: Last week we heard that they wanted to return to work.
Official: Yes.
Han: Do they still want that?
Official: Yes, it seems they want that too. (...)
Official: We haven't opened the canteen for a week already. Either you go to eat somewhere, or just like them, you go hungry all day until you go home. Those among them who have the means go to eat in small restaurants; those who don't have the means just go hungry from morning to night." (Source of these interviews: http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1630, http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1636,http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1642,http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1648,http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/1654 )
Demonstrations continued at least for next three months. During this phase, nearly 1,000 workers were spearheading the demonstrations on a regular basis in Iron Man Square & at least seven to eight thousand workers were participating regularly despite police roadblocks. From the beginning of the demonstration, plainclothes police made detentions of anyone who appeared to play a leading or organizing role & since mid-March, demonstrations were being monitored by police forces; in addition, at least twelve truckloads of soldiers were always kept ready out of sight for being available at a moment's notice.
On March 5, ten worker representatives were taken into custody after they entered the Daqing Oil building at the invitation of officials for negotiation. They were released three days later on condition they would not return to Iron Man Square. On the same day, plain-dress police detained one Mrs. Ma. According to a participant who witnessed the incident, police officials hit her hard enough to make her mouth bleed. She was still in custody as on April 1 and had been able to send a letter to her comrades informing that she was refusing food. Another retired worker, Li Yan, was also detained & till mid-July, his whereabouts and condition remained unknown. One more worker was also detained for some twenty days for hanging a banner, and released after he paid Rmb 200 to the detention centre. According to a report, as many as 300 workers were detained during this phase.
According to participants in the protests,police released some detainees only after they agreed to sign pledges not to return to Iron Man Square. As reported by one worker: "She [the police officer] read the contents of the pledge to me clause by clause. Clause 1 said: guarantee not to go take part in disturbances. I told her that of course I have to go [to the square]. If I don't, then I'm finished. This is a matter of my rights".
As the weeks passed, the situation was becoming increasingly tense. A combination of threats, police directive and bad weather dampened the protest planned for April 4. Day by day, workers were becoming exhausted, demonstrations were becoming smaller & side by side authorities were becoming more assertive.On April 19, at about 10:00 am, a combined force of police, PAP and Daqing Oil security guards encircled Iron Man Square and the Daqing Oil building & announced in the loudspeakers, "Owing to the presence of Falungong activists and people of unknown identity in the square, we need to carry out identity checks. Please do not leave the square." There was no evidence of Falungong involvement in the protests. Soon police detained everyone who was then present in the iron Man Square. According to a report, at least twelve public buses were loaded with detainees. An eyewitness described the scene: "I saw this older guy. He was retired, not laid off. The police really steamed into him and were screaming at him, ?What good is there in your going to Iron Man Square? What are you doing there? Are you from the Falungong? Tell us, are you Falungong?' The old guy was crying in terror".
Thereafter, on April 22, when some 7,000 workers were demonstrating at Iron Man Square, Police cordoned off the area, workers were squeezed at the sides of the Square & police dogs sniffed for explosives near Iron Man Wang's statue. But nothing was found. During that same week, police started to identify workers who were still then employed & were taking part in the protests, & to threaten them. Still, on May 13, a reported 20,000 workers gathered in front of Daqing Oil to demand negotiations.
F] Rebellion of the Workers of Tonghua Iron and Steel Works
Privatisation process of State Owned Enterprise Tonghua Iron & Steel has been going on since last few years. In 2005, Jianlong Steel, a private enterprise took a 36% stake as part of a restructuring of the company. However, as part of current economic recession, when downturn in the steel industry was started last year, Jianlong sought to withdraw its investment; & again after rise of Steel prices in earlier 2009, Jianlong again has reversed its course and has bid to become the majority shareholder.
Jianlong Steel belongs to the Chinese steel industry billionnaire Mr. Zhang Zhixiang. He is the grandson of Zhang Wannian, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission. In 2008 Zhang Zhixiang was ranked 10th on the list of China's richest people, and it is estimated that his personal wealth exceeds 20 billion RMB. Mr Zhang Zhixiang has a long history of purchasing large or medium-sized SOEs at low prices and it is said that during this process, thru' some underhand dealing, he has been able to acquire such gigantic wealth. In 2005, Jianlong Group purchased 50% of the stock of Jilin Metallurgy Group, the largest state-owned enterprise in Jilin province, having a capital volume of more than 10 billion RMB. Till this day, it is the largest example of "SOE Restructuring" in the entire north-eastern region of China. After privatisation of Jilin Metallurgy, Tonghua Steel has remained the only large SOE in Jilin province, though most of its stock are owned by the state-capital assets committee of Jilin province & the workers have also owned a small amount of stock, involving tens of thousands of both employed and retired workers.
In 2005, Jianlong Group, under the explicit support of the Jilin provincial government, has purchased around 40% of Tonghua's stock in 2005 and began to engage in the full-scale management of this enterprise. After this the condition of the enterprise declined dramatically and the level of antagonism between the management layers and the workers intensified daily. Some experienced workers with more than 20 or 30 years of work experience saw their monthly salary decreasing to around 300 RMB, whereas the new management layers sent by Jianlong Group all had very high wages, the chief executive of the company Mr. Chen Guojun, had an annual income exceeding 3 million RMB.
?During the period from 2008 to 2009 both employed and retired workers at Tonghua Steel have engaged in numerous demonstrations. However, it have been ignored & suppressed by the government. At the end of 2008 due to the effects of the current economic recession, huge losses were experienced in Tonghua Steel & production was ceased in the plant. Under this circumstance, Jianlong Group, in March 2009, has declared that they would resign from the actual functional management of Tonghua Steel, but still kept control over its stocks. Yet when, by June 2009 when Tonghua Steel began to make profits again, and the monthly profit margin exceeded 60 million RMB, during mid-July, Tonghua Steel received an order from the state-capital assets committee of Jilin province stating that Jianlong Group would once again participate in Tonghua Steel, and this time the amount of stock it would control would exceed 65%. For the workers at Tonghua who have diligently struggled at their workplaces for nearly a year to reverse the losses of the enterprise, to see that just when there appeared a little bit of profit, the Jianlong Group and corrupt government officials have again returned to plunder them.
Under this circumstance, when on 23 July, the state-capital assets committee of Jilin province and the city government of Tonghua formally ordered Tonghua Steel to hand over the control of its stock to Jianlong Group, angry employees and retired workers went onto the streets to protest. On the morning of 24 July, Tonghua employees and retired workers went around the entire city once and explicitly called for the "defense of the state-owned enterprise Tonghua Steel". The demonstrators went to numerous factory zones to mobilise other workers and virtually everyone responded to their called. Workers went on strike one after another and joined the demonstrators from Tonghua, by the afternoon of that day the number of demonstrators had already exceeded 30,000 people. At around this time, the local government sent both police and riot police, as well as around 1000 armed militias to suppress the peaceful demonstrators, and some of the armed police were called from the nearby cities of Changchun and Jilin. The management layer of Jianlong Group continued to threaten the workers and caused many incidents. They stated that if the workers do not immediately return to work, then they would all be fired. This eventually made the situation out of control. Workers violently clashed with the armed police, and fought with the managers. At this time, the Chief Executive of Jianlong Steel, Mr. Chen Guojun, has threatened the workers that if they do not return to work, then everyone will be fired. The angry workers physically hit Mr. Chen, and around 9pm during the evening of 24 July, it was reported that Mr. Chen died as a result of severe wounds. The gate of the factory was then blocked in an apparent attempt to prevent ambulance and police vehicles from entering. During the clash, workers destroyed dozens of police vehicles, and dozens of them were arrested as a result. By 10pm that evening, more than 30,000 workers and their relatives still occupied the factory zones and refused to retreat. In order to pacify the situation, the local government sent another extra 2000 or so policemen, and through various media, including both TV and radio, they formally declared that Jianlong Group has decided to quit from Tonghua Steel, and would never again participate in its "restructuring" process.
After this incident, "restructuring" process of Tonghua Steel was temporarily stalled both the provincial Government. But, a witch hunt has begun on behalf of the provincial government to terrorise the workers in the name of arresting the "culprits". Number of workers were detained & according to Xinhua report in November, 2009, Tonghua employee, Ji Yigang, 50, "chief suspect" in the death of Chen Guojun was apprehended on 16 October and had confessed to the crime, and that five other suspects had also surrendered to the police. It has also said Ji had a criminal record. In 1978, he was sentenced to three years re-education through labour for theft, and in 1982 was sentenced by a Tonghua court to seven years imprisonment for robbery. In addition, a total of nine other Tonghua workers were detained for investigation and their latest status is not known. At the same time, Ren Fengyu, Retired Workers' Representative as well as a labour activist was sentenced on 9 September for 18 months reeducation through labour for "assembling a crowd to create a disturbance" His only "crime" was that he had put up a poster calling for the legalization of a Tonghua workers' rights organization and the formal election of its representatives.
Whatever might be the level of terror unleashed over the Tonghua Steel Workers, within a month of this incident, several hundred workers of another SOE Steel Plant, Linzhou Steel Corporation in central Henan province has occupied their plant for five days in opposition to a proposed takeover by privately-owned Fengbao Iron & Steel. During their protest workers took Dong Zhangyin, an official of the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) in nearby Anyang city, as a hostage for four days.The workers' occupation began on 11 August and ended on 15 August. At this point, having failed to break the occupation using armed police, Henan's provincial government announced it was suspending the privatisation.
In the Linzhou case, workers are incensed at the abysmally low compensation terms made under the takeover bid: laid-off workers would receive only 1,090 yuan ($160) for each year of service . Workers also complain about the scandalously low price tag for the company. Linzhou Steel's assets had a book value of 831 million yuan ($121m), but the commission in charge of privatisation valued the company at just 331 million yuan ($48.4m) and then gave Fengbao Iron & Steel a further 10 million yuan discount! Workers describe Fengbao as an empty "shell" that brings nothing to the deal other than a notorious reputation for not paying workers' wages.
Fengbao is owned by a well-known Henan billionaire, Li Guangyuan, whose business empire is now among China's 500 largest companies. He is also a village Communist Party secretary, delegate to the Provincial People's Congress in Henan & also the brother of a top general in the People's Liberation Army.
Li has loudly denounced the provincial government's climb down. He points out his company has already paid for Linzhou Steel. But for the time being his interests have been pushed aside by the government's overriding concern for ?stability' and the fear that unless nipped in the bud at an early stage, conflicts like this can metastasise throughout the steel industry and other candidates for privatisation. This was shown by the comments of Henan's Communist Party chief Xu Guangchun, who called on all levels of officials to "evaluate risks to social stability before giving the go-ahead for any corporate restructuring".
In the next issue of FAPP in the 4th part of this article, we'll start our discussion by bringing our preliminary observations about the above-referred SOE workers' struggle.
[To Be Continued]
NOTE : Rmb 8 Yuan is approximately equal to 1 US $
Source:
[Information is taken & cross-checked from various sources. However, author is greatly indebted to the following sources for different information & ideas placed in this part of the article.]
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Websites:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org
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