The Chinese state tightened its control over civil society in 2015. Suppression of women’s rights activists, human rights lawyers and political dissidents occurred throughout the year. Labour activists were not spared.
In December, cops raided the offices of six different labour NGOs in Guangdong province and arrested 15 staff and other workers. Dozens more were interviewed by police in the following days. The repression of industrial actions is common in China – but this was the first time that such an operation was directed against labour NGOs.
Most people were released the next day, but seven were held for more than a month. On 8 January, four of these detainees were formally charged. According to the South China Morning Post, Zeng Feiyang, Meng Han and Zhu Xiaomei, from the Panyu Migrant Worker Service Centre, were charged with “gathering crowds to disturb social order”, and He Xiaobo of the Nanfeiyan Social Worker Centre was charged with embezzlement.
The state propaganda machine launched a campaign against these activists. For example, China Central Television broadcast a half-hour news report, “Investigating the crimes of the star of the labour movement” on 23 December. “The star of the labour movement” refers to Zeng, who is the director of the Panyu Migrant Worker Service Centre. His “crimes” include inciting workers to strike, receiving foreign funds, using the centre’s money to buy shampoo for himself and having eight mistresses.
Nevertheless, many people commenting on social media said things like, “What’s wrong with inciting workers to strike when the government-controlled ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) is doing nothing?”
Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy was questioned. Zeng and his colleagues have been compared to the members of the 1920s Communist Party, which led all the significant strikes during that era. Many of them were arrested or killed by the government or warlords.
Indeed, Zeng’s centre was involved in China’s most inspiring industrial dispute of 2015: the struggle of Lide shoe factory workers. After eight months and three strikes – including six days of “no-one in and no-one out” picketing – 2,700 workers from this factory in Panyu, Guangzhou, won social insurance and housing and overtime payments.
The rulers of China do not want such victories to be replicated, especially with the economy enduring difficulties.
An article published by China’s largest financial website, Hexun, predicts a bigger round of factory closures in 2016, especially in industries suffering overcapacity. Even state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reportedly are not going to be spared.
The article says that the central government has set up a timetable for closing “zombie SOEs” in nine different industries, including coal, metallurgy and chemicals. This could add more than 6 million to the number of unemployed in the next two years.
White collar workers are also facing an increasingly difficult situation. According to a report by China’s major recruitment company, Zhilian Zhaopin, in the fourth quarter of 2015, each white collar opening received, on average, 36.8 applications. The figures in the previous three quarter were 26.1, 29.3 and 35.4 respectively.
The trigger for the Lide dispute was a factory closure; its workers demanded fair compensation and the paying of social security debts. This is likely to be a common scenario in the coming period.
If all the workers to be laid off were to choose a militant and well-organised strategy to defend their rights, as the Lide workers did, it would be a nightmare for China’s ruling class. The government has less space to intervene forcefully to prop up the economy. Neither could it repress effectively all the striking workers.
One story from the Lide dispute illustrates this. When a group of cops were ordered to break the picket, senior women workers yelled at them: “We are fighting for our retirement livelihood; think about your mums – they may suffer from the same treatment one day!” The cops reportedly were ashamed and stood back.
This is part of the reason the government chose to punish the labour activists who help workers to get better organised. Those who are arrested are the most active and prominent figures. The strategies they advocate are also more militant. The authorities want to make examples of them in order to intimidate others in the labour movement.
It may work. But even if labour NGOs in China take a step back from agitation, workers who are losing jobs are still going to fight.

Hui Xiamei

Labour activists under attack in China

Luxury goods retailers in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui district were expecting “golden week holiday” travellers in late September. But not every visitor from the Chinese mainland was there to shop.
On 30 September, the day before China’s National Day, three workers from a handbag factory in Guangdong province, along with local labour activists, staged a protest in front of the Tommy Hilfiger flagship store on Nathan Road. They were demanding unpaid wages and severance pay.
The handbag factory had been a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based SKS Manufacturing Company, which is a supplier of the international clothing brand.
Earlier this year, SKS shut down the factory during the Chinese New Year holiday, without giving notice to its workers. The workers sued the factory and a mainland court ordered the owners to pay out the 103 employees. However, after reportedly handing over only a fraction of what the court ordered, the bosses disappeared.
Eighty percent of SKS’s business was with Tommy Hilfiger, so labour activists in Hong Kong demanded that the latter take responsibility for the debt.
The SKS factory is only one example of a recent trend. According to Taiwan’s Wealth Magazine, from 2013 to 2015, more than 50 billion Taiwan dollars (A$2.1 billion) was withdrawn from the mainland by Taiwanese companies. These companies used to employ a great number of rural migrant workers. Now some are beginning to shift production out of the country.
For instance, Yue Yuen Industrial Limited, the world’s largest footwear manufacturer, at its peak employed 120,000 to 130,000 workers at its production base in Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta. Now only about 30,000 remain. South-East Asian countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam are now Yue Yuen’s favoured locations because wages are lower.
Another example is Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing – best known in Australia as the owner of Hutchison Ports, which sacked almost half its workforce by text message in August. According to the Sina Finance website, in the past three years, Li cashed out more than 100 billion RMB (A$21 billion) by selling mainland estates and shifting the focus of his portfolio toward Europe and his business to the Cayman Islands.
The site said: “Li Ka-shing’s choices do appear particularly brazen. In the eyes of ordinary people, we shared comfort and prosperity together in the good times, but when the hard times come he abandons us”.
The Wall Street Journal labelled his move “prescient” and “good timing”. Li’s motivation is simple: investments in China are not as profitable as previously and current indicators point to a deteriorating situation.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, economic growth in the third quarter of this year was 6.9 percent, which is the slowest since 2009. Data from the Ministry of Finance show that profits of state-owned enterprises decreased by 8.2 percent over the first three quarters of 2015, compared with last year.
Yet while capital freely runs away, workers face a tougher life.
Although the official unemployment rate of 5.2 percent doesn’t sound too bad, the International Labor Organisation estimates that the youth unemployment rate will reach 11.1 percent next year.
The state provides little financial assistance to unemployed youth, so most depend on their parents and eventually accept low-paid jobs. University graduates with white collar jobs don’t necessarily have higher salaries, and unpaid overtime is the norm. Also, companies often only offer short-term contracts to new recruits. 
The older generations of migrant workers have no retirement security. In many cases, they have had to fight hard to force the bosses to contribute to the inadequate social security fund. But once the factories are shut down or relocated, workers have little chance to win their demands.
Ms Wang (pseudonym) is one of the three SKS workers who went to Hong Kong to protest. Due to her age, she couldn’t find another full time factory job and now has to work in a family-based workshop. Her shift is at night and the pay is 7.5 RMB (A$1.60) per hour, which is much less than her previous wage.
She and her co-workers recognise that there is only a slim chance that Tommy Hilfiger will accept responsibility for the owed money, but they won’t give up without a fight.

Capital divestment hitting China

More than two weeks after a huge explosion in a Ruihai International Logistics warehouse in the port city of Tianjin, the official death toll stands at 129. It is unclear if this is accurate, and the state’s attempt to silence rumours on social media that the figure is higher has increased people’s distrust of the government.
The cause of this tragedy still remains unclear. The authorities cannot even say who the actual bosses of Ruihai International are. Conjecture has spread about the company’s connections with top Communist Party leaders.
More than 17,000 apartments were damaged by the explosion. Moreover, the surrounding area has been contaminated by a dangerous chemical spill, but there is no clear answer about compensation and resettlement.
On 3 September, the largest military parade in China’s history will be held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing – 150km from the site of the explosion. According to the government, now is the time to celebrate the great nation; too much talk about dead civilians and homeless victims is inopportune. Pictures of the ruins of Tianjin must be carefully erased from the media and replaced with the spectacular images of fighter jet fleets and tank contingents.
Ironically, another explosion occurred in a chemical plant in Shandong province, south of Beijing, 10 days after the Tianjin disaster. It was a reminder that such disasters are not so rare in this country. According to Greenpeace East Asia, prior to Tianjin, 13 industrial explosions had already occurred in China this year.
One of the things that made the Tianjin explosion so damaging is the proximity of Ruihai International Logistics to residential buildings. Duowei News has reported that, according to an investigation carried out by the Chinese government’s environmental protection department in 2006, 2,489 chemical projects were located in urban or populated areas.
Those who live nearby have no say over whether those dangerous facilities should be built and no control over safety procedures within the factories.
This is not only because corrupt officials accepted bribes and gave the green light to the projects in the first place. More fundamentally, the situation is the result of the state’s economic ambitions. Profits and GDP growth are, for the rulers of China as for all capitalist ruling classes, much more important than human lives and the environment.
The legitimacy of the Communist Party is also highly reliant on the population having jobs and incomes. But the economic outlook has deteriorated. Exports are declining, and there is great turmoil in stock markets, hitting the savings of middle class and working class people. The goal of 7 percent annual GDP growth is far from secure. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the government will shut down the dangerous chemical projects in urban areas.
It’s not just chemical plants, either. China is building more than two dozen nuclear reactors and intends to build several hundred before 2050. Many of the planned reactors are in the Yangtze River basin, which is a major water source and agricultural area.
He Zuoxiu, a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, has warned that China’s nuclear safety regulations seriously lag behind the latest international standards and that some of the selected locations are not suitable for building reactors because they are highly populated areas. If severe nuclear incidents happen in China’s inland provinces, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Tianjin explosion not an isolated incident

The Shanghai region is one of the most important motors of Chinese capitalism. However, the city’s political conservatism is as clear as its economic strength. Unlike cities in the Pearl River Delta, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Shanghai rarely is the location of mass protests or sizeable industrial actions.
However, things might be changing. At the end of June, tens of thousands of locals rallied for seven days in Shanghai’s Jinshan District. They were protesting against the planned construction of a new paraxylene (PX) plant. This is probably the largest rebellious street mobilisation in the city since the 1989 student movement.
PX is a flammable hydrocarbon used in the manufacture of plastic bottles and polyester clothing. It is a dangerous chemical to handle or inhale. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of the substance.
<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1378798/fears-over-expanded-paraxylene-projects-beijing-decentralises-approval">The expansion of PX projects</a> is generating mass urban unrest in China. In the past eight years, protests broke out in seven cities. Demonstrations in Dalian and Ningbo turned into violent confrontations between anti-riot police and demonstrators.
<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OsZNOnVa5yw?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0" width="560"></iframe>
The state and the corporations involved never give up trying to white wash the hazards of PX plants. But an explosion in Zhangzhou’s PX plant earlier this year again undermined the official propaganda. Residents near the plants worry that, even if PX is less poisonous than many other chemicals produced in the country, their safety still cannot be guaranteed as long as those plants are run by corrupt and unaccountable corporations.
For local government officials, attracting a PX project can be beneficial in many ways: increasing local economic output, increasing the employment rate, attracting investment in infrastructure and personal “grey income”.
Thus local governments are always on the side of business and use all means – from demanding that print shops report “suspicious materials” such as oppositional posters and leaflets, to firing tear gas at demonstrators – to suppress environmental protests.
However, a heavy-handed strategy is effective only in dealing with small number of protesters. It’s easy to disperse and persecute several hundred. But when people gather in their tens of thousands, they do not fear the tear gas and batons. Then the local officials have only two options: order the police and soldiers to crack down or cancel the construction of the plant.
Neither the local bureaucrats nor the big bosses in Beijing want to risk provoking uprisings in major cities, so they often choose the second option. This has been the case several times in relation to PX plants.
For those who do not want polluting chemical plants, waste incineration plants or nuclear power stations in their neighbourhood, mobilising a large crowd on the street as quickly as possible is important.
This strategy worked again in Shanghai. Although many were arrested and detained during the seven days of protests, the Shanghai government eventually announced the suspension of the project.
However, as long as PX plants are profitable, corporations will try to build them in different locations, such as where the local population is not big enough to stage a mass protest. 
Widespread environmental damage
It is not just PX manufacture that is generating resistance. There is widespread environmental degradation in China; it is taking a heavy toll on the population. Liu Jianqiang, Beijing editor at China Dialogue <a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5788-China-s-environment-ministry-an-utter-disappointment-">noted in 2013</a>:
“The last five years have … seen the Ministry of Environmental Protection loosen environmental impact assessment requirements, allowing large projects nationwide – and particularly in ecologically fragile west China – to go ahead unimpeded, with the power giants free to destroy rivers …
“These five years have seen pollution incidents increase, with air pollution already more than the public can bear. Food safety scares have been frequent, while contamination of rivers, lakes, oceans and groundwater has worsened. The country has 200 “cancer villages”, and in Beijing cases of lung cancer have increased 60 percent over the last decade.” 
Environmental concerns reportedly have replaced land disputes as the main cause of social unrest in the country. One retired Communist Party official <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-06/pollution-passes-land-grievances-as-main-spark-of-china-protests">told reporters</a> that “the major reason” for so-called mass incidents – public demonstrations, strikes and protests – is the environment. “If you want to build a plant”, he told reporters, “and if the plant may cause cancer, how can people remain calm?”
Information about many of the mass incidents, especially the smaller ones, is eliminated from the internet very quickly by the state. So it’s impossible to calculate the exact number. Estimates vary between 30,000 and 150,000 per year.
But the message from known cases is clear enough: more and more Chinese people have had enough of pollution. For many, this is a life and death question. It will generate more and more intensive struggles in the months and years to come.

Week-long mass protest rocks Shanghai

Chinese social media platform The Sound of Hammer recently posted a report on labour disputes in the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone in first quarter of 2015. It listed 23 strikes, labour protests and other demonstrations.
Approximately 26,000 workers were involved in these incidents; the largest involved 8,000 workers, who went on strike in a footwear factory in Dongguan.
There are tens of millions of workers in this region, so the situation is far from an insurgency. Indeed, most of the incidents were defensive. One-third of the actions were in response to a factory closure or relocation. In these cases, the strikes could not hurt bosses much.
As usual, local governments were on the side of the bosses. In 11 cases, police used violence and arrested strikers or protesting workers.
Only one clear victory was registered, in a strike in a Citizen watch factory.
Unpaid social security contributions were a factor in half of the reported incidents. This issue has been building for two decades. Many workers who have toiled for years, especially the first generation of migrant workers, are now suddenly finding out that they won’t get any income after they retire.
The first generation of migrant workers generally are less educated, and can’t lodge a legal challenge without assistance. In many cases they have limited understanding of the law.
Labour NGOs have helped in this area, playing important supporting roles such as writing legal documents and giving lectures about labour laws to workers.
But intensified state repression has made it increasingly difficult for labour NGOs to survive. Their funds are drained, their staff are harassed, and their offices are shut down. A recent example was the assault of labour activist Peng Jiayong, who was kidnapped by cops and severely beaten in April after helping workers in one of the strikes listed in this report.
If Chinese exports continue to decline, the factory closures and relocations will continue and even become more prevalent.
Issues such as social security payments are time bombs that will inevitably explode and bring about greater industrial unrest in this region. When it will happen, however, is anyone’s guess.
Victories are not impossible. After eight months and three strikes, 2,700 workers from the Lide footwear factory in Panyu, Guangzhou, recently registered a win in their campaign for social insurance, housing and overtime payments, among other things.
Importantly, although activists from labour NGOs had helped throughout the whole process, the elected workers’ representatives were the backbone of the struggle.
The leaders of the future labour movement are emerging in the current dark days.

Labour activists under attack in China

Capital divestment hitting China

Tianjin explosion not an isolated incident

Week-long mass protest rocks Shanghai

Workers on the defensive, but situation explosive

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