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NEWS & LETTERS, February-March 2006Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryChina: capital, the WTO, and labor unrestNew economic data released in December showed China as the world’s fourth largest economy, with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2004 estimated at $2 trillion. This means that only the U.S., Japan, and Germany now outproduce China, with Germany soon to be surpassed as well, as Britain and France have been in recent years. Even as China’s economy has experienced very high annual growth rates of around 10% in recent years, the vast majority of the increase has gone to capital accumulation rather than consumer goods. This is especially true of basic goods for working people. To take one example, during the six years from 1997 to 2003, domestic clothing consumption rose by only 22%, less than 4% per year. This process of capital accumulation, one of history’s most rapid and far-reaching, has gone hand-in-hand with ruthless exploitation of working people. Denied the right to organize, and with few other legal protections, workers face low pay and harsh and unsafe conditions. At the bottom is a floating population of some 100 million migrant workers, driven into the cities by rural poverty and unemployment, and without any rights whatsoever. Even if migrants are killed in an industrial or mining accident, this may not be included in the official death toll. These issues came to the fore around the case of Wang Binyin, a young migrant worker executed last October. In a situation reminiscent of an Émile Zola novel, Wang had worked for two years in a factory, but his pay was withheld, a common situation for migrant workers. Even after his father called to ask for money for an operation, Wang received only the first year’s pay, this with heavy deductions for board and other fees. At this point, he lost his temper, stabbing four foremen to death. In a jailhouse interview, Wang stated: "I want to die. When I am dead, nobody can exploit me anymore. Right?" Intellectuals, journalists, and bloggers took up Wang’s case, but this discussion was soon suppressed. As Cai Chongguo, European representative of the CHINA LABOUR BULLETIN wrote recently, the state "forbids intellectuals and journalists from getting involved in worker and peasant questions" (LE MONDE, 12/17/05). Clearly, the regime fears the type of unity of worker and intellectual that has characterized so many successful revolutions, from Russia 1917 to Poland’s Solidarnosc. Class tensions were also evident in December, when some 20 residents of Dongzhu, a fishing village in Guangdong Province across the bay from Hong Kong, were shot to death by police. Villagers had gathered to protest construction of a giant power plant, which involved filling their small bay with landfill. This would have destroyed their livelihoods, possibly turning them into migrant workers too. Coverage of these events, the bloodiest since Tiananmen Square in 1989, was blocked in Chinese media and internet sites. But the relatively freer media of Hong Kong, including TV, was able to reach much of industrialized southern China with detailed reports. The anxiety of the Chinese rulers was not decreased when, during the same week, anti-globalization activists from around the world converged on Hong Kong’s World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting. Protesters shouted "No Bush!" and "Down WTO." They slightly damaged the U.S. Consulate, while South Korean farmers managed at another point to break through police lines. Some 10,000 police were on hand to confront only a few thousand demonstrators. Alongside the action on the streets were forums where activists from around the world shared experiences. One of them, Shamima Nasrin from Bangladesh, decried the effects of trade liberalization on her sister workers: "70% of garment workers are women; most of them will lose their jobs and end up being trafficked or going into prostitution." As we went to press, 14 WTO protesters were facing trial, nine of them Korean farmers. We demand freedom for these and all other political and classwar prisoners in China. |
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