| The powers that be in Beijing are faced with an interesting dilemma. They know they must restructure state-owned enterprises if China's economy is to thrive. But restructuring, given the layoff of millions of workers such a move would imply, poses a threat to political stability. With labor unrest on the rise, this dilemma will become increasingly difficult for leaders to resolve without allowing workers to organize and elect credible representatives with whom they can then negotiate.
According to a report by a Party Central Committee task force, work stoppages and formal complaints of unfair labor practices in mainland China have more than doubled since 1994, and violence by and against the authorities has "increased alarmingly." China's own Ministry of Labor reports more than 50,000 complaints through September of 1997 alone. The list of conflicts continues to grow: Heilongjiang workers shut down the county seat of Acheng in Harbin City last January to vent their anger at working several mantis without wages. Last summer, more than 500 000 workers in Hunan Jiangxi, and Fujian protested the distribution of IOUs-notes used occasionally by local governments in hen of wages - as well as higher taxes and special fees Periodic uprisings in inner Mongolia and Xinjiang peaking in early July, left more than 50 people dead and another 25D wounded. And members of die People's Armed Police attracted world-wide attention later in the same month when they broke up a series of protests in Sichuan involving around 100 000 workers. Labor upheavals so far are the product of "almost no central or even organized effort," as one former China democracy protester put it Virtually all the "union" activity in China takes place in official cells under the watchful eye of party officials. Leaders invariably emerge in individual actions, bit are quickly exiled, imprisoned or pacified There is no Lech Walesa on the shop floor of even a single key factory - though the movement may have a Jacek Kuron, or intellectual gum in the person of Han Dongfang, the former mainland labor activist, publisher of the China Labor Bulletin, and popular broadcaster an Radio Free Asia. The movement is more the product of an increasingly cosmopolitan population - in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and other thriving cities - coming to demand greater political accountability and civil freedom. What's more, these people have growing means at their disposal - televisions, cell phones, the Internet -to acquire and spread information without the government's assent. In response Beijing is using new and more forceful steps to quell labor disputes and social unrest. Last spring, at an emergency Central Committee meeting, Chinese Premier Li Peng proposed a five-point plan for dealing with both labor and rural-peasant unrest. The new policy included expanding the crackdown on free-labor journals launched by Jiang Zemin earlier in the year, and, at the same time, encouraged spending official funds and non-official "voluntary" funds backed by party officials to bail out displaced workers and businesses. While this carrot-and-stick strategy has defused a number of individual crises, it has not stemmed the growth of new uprisings' and may even be contributing to them. last March, for instance, Mr. Li traveled to the northeast province of Liaoning to offer financial aid to displaced workers. During this visit he pardoned three local strike organizers. As word of these events spread, strikers in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia demanded similar packages. The party was able to limit many of these threats, but felt constrained to offer mom than $100 mom in financial aid in Sichuan province after the labor riots there last summer. Weeks after the Sichuan payments, disturbances broke out in a dozen counties in neighboring Hubei province. In July the "disorder" had spread as tar as Jiangxi province. At last fall's Party Congress, Jiang Zemin and key military officials decided that Mr. Li's policy was too much carrot and not enough stick The Congress's much-heralded decision to reduce the size of the People's Liberation Army by me million, for example, represents mom a shift in priorities than a true reduction. With less fanfare the same Congress acted to nearly double the size of the People's Armed Police (China's de facto National Guard for domestic disturbances) from 700,000 at present to approximately 1.2 million by this summer. Moreover, the Armed Police's presence within the powerful Central Committee has also been expanded. Mr. Jiang formalized its integration with military units in 1996 and delivered a high profile address to the Armed Police this spring, emphasizing its "leading role," and warning party officials to henceforth treat it I'm a par" with the Liberation Army. A shift in resources and political clout of this magnitude has ominous implications for any would-be labor organizers or spot protesters. While a crackdown may prove effective in reducing outward unrest in the short run. it will no doubt frustrate cooperation from workers in die task of enterprise restructuring, leaving the government with no real partners to talk to in the event of a crisis. Bona-fide popular labor leaders in individual plants don't want to step forward knowing they'll simply be jailed later. And the communist-run "union" leaders have no credibility with workers. Allowing workers to select their own, truly independent representation is, in the long run, the only way to develop a negotiating partner that the government can deal with to resume production - one that, unlike the current party run unions, can make a deal workers will follow. Sadly, this is far too bold a move for Beijing to contemplate at this time. But there may be half measures that would stop well short of Solidarity-style national independent unionism and still build the ground work for a long-term shift to independent labor organizations. The government could, for example, allow purely local organizing, including shop elections. After all, the government has permitted some local elections, open to non-party candidature, for city councils and even some seats to the National People's Congress. Allowing workers to organize locally would provide Beijing with a talking partner on a plant-by-plant basis. And it would give the Chinese people training in the ways and means of free citizenship-much as the jury system so admired by Alexis de Tocqueville gave the average American a kind of education in democracy." No doubt even such a limited experiment would be seen as dangerous by the Communist Party The alter, native, however, will most likely be continued unrest and stopped production. Limited organizing may be seen by Beijing as the lesser of two evils, especially as the impact of devaluation and recession in the rest of Asia begins to hit home. Home | Publications | Search | Opportunity Africa | Democracy China | Cuba | Defense | Education Reform | Environment | Immigration | Intellectual Property | International Monetary Fund | Democracy Switzerland | Taxes and Regulation | Technology | Telecom |