Far Eastern Economic Review: China -- Labour Unrest

By David Murphy in Daqing

04/04/2002

Far Eastern Economic Review

HARRY POTTER is playing at the cinema and Volkswagen has just opened a new car dealership on the outskirts of Daqing, which means "big celebration." But for most residents of this gritty northeastern city, a few hundred kilometres from the Russian border, there isn't much to be happy about.

Oil stocks are falling in the wells that made this city famous as the crown jewel of China's drive to industrialize nearly 40 years ago. Once lionized as the heroes of China's proletariat, many of its oil workers have in the last three years been laid off or retired. Since March 1, tens of thousands have poured out of grubby low-rise factory housing and onto the streets of Daqing in freezing temperatures to protest, angry that promises of pensions and medical care made during their working years have now been watered down by management.

Similar protests rocked the city of Liaoyang in adjacent Liaoning province and there have been other reports of scattered industrial unrest around the country this month. Since 1998, 25 million workers have been laid off from state companies, Li Rongrong, the country's economy minister, said in Beijing on March 8. Those sackings have provoked tens of thousands of similar, but smaller, disputes since 1998. Terrified that these could mushroom into a nationwide movement, the government has concentrated on suppressing dissent and preventing protesting groups in different cities and provinces from linking up with each other.

That job is made easier by the fact that there is no serious organized political opposition in the country and political dissidents are quickly thrown in jail by ever-watchful state security officers. A visit to Daqing shows why containment has proved so successful at a regional level. Local, as well as national, media are banned from reporting the demonstrations, even though they are clearly the biggest news in town. Riot squads were brought in from nearby Qiqihar city and People's Armed Police units arrived from the provincial capital of Harbin to intimidate the workers, say local residents.

Smear tactics are employed against the demonstrators with the authorities claiming they are infiltrated by members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, say locals. [Editors' Note: yet another instance of the Chinese propaganda machine trying to frame and scapegoat Falun Gong for all of China's perceived ills to distract the people from focusing on the real problems]. The company has warned its employees not to talk to outsiders about events in the city, says an employee of a production unit attached to the Daqing Petroleum Administration Bureau, which was the focus of demonstrations. The sight of a foreign reporter sets people on edge and police are constantly on patrol. "We don't want to involve the foreign media. We are patriotic," a worker told one visitor.

But the workers in Daqing developed their own response to the authorities and refused to appoint representatives because of worries that they would be arrested. That fear was borne out by the arrest of six labour leaders in Liaoyang. Han Dongfang, a Hong Kong-based labour activist thinks the new tactic is confounding the authorities and giving the protests a longer lifespan. "I believe the Daqing workers have started a new age for workers in China," says Han, who helped to establish an independent trade union in Beijing in 1989.

That won't solve the basic problem of the redundant workers whose demands to have their jobs back are unlikely to be met. In Daqing and elsewhere in the northeast, jobs are scarce. Unemployment is more than 40% in many northeastern cities, according to the World Bank. Most of the foreign investment that flows into China goes to the southern coastal areas and the Shanghai region.

Meanwhile, the government has failed to put a workable social safety net in place and responds to outbreaks of worker anger using threats and money. Unless that approach is refined, increased competition because of China's entry to the World Trade Organization is likely to see many more protests. That prospect makes Beijing distinctly nervous. Of all the disgruntled groups, "they are most afraid of the workers," notes a former soldier turned-worker in Harbin.

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