
China in Revolt - llambda
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/china-in-revolt/
======
tokenadult
Here are some key points from the article (which was correctly submitted with
its original title, reflecting the view of the author):

"While there are no official statistics, it is certain that thousands, if not
tens of thousands, of strikes take place each year. All of them are wildcat
strikes – there is no such thing as a legal strike in China.

. . . .

"Workers have been asking for wage increases above and beyond those to which
they are legally entitled, and in many strikes they have begun to demand that
they elect their own union representatives. They have not called for
independent unions outside of the official All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU), as this would surely incite violent state repression. But the
insistence on elections represents the germination of political demands, even
if the demand is only organized at the company level."

I have been reading the government-controlled mass media from China in English
since 1975 and in the original Chinese since 1979. Chinese media sources are
very wary of reporting on the genuine condition of working people in China. As
the article kindly submitted here reports, and as can even be confirmed from
the official media in China, there are thousands of instances of local unrest
each year in China. (A category for "China unrest" stories I have set on
Google News regularly turns up new cases reported by many different media
sources.)

Progress in standard of living and even in day-by-day freedom for the masses
has been real in my lifetime, and rather steady since the repression after the
Tian'anmen Square Massacre relaxed, but the common people of China still
mostly live in conditions that were unacceptable in neighboring countries
decades ago. The test of China's development in the next decade will be
whether political reform can at length catch up with having multiparty
democracy and free and fair local elections--something Taiwan had in the
1950s. If government censorship of the mass media ends in China, as it ended
in Taiwan more than twenty years ago, then maybe China can have an honest
internal debate about how to continue progress for the masses. If it has that
honest debate, one likely suggestion is to have free and fair elections at the
national level, so that there is an actual chance of a peaceful transfer of
power from the Communist Party of China.

AFTER EDIT: The first kind reply to my comment asks how likely (peaceful)
change in the direction of democratization and press freedom is in China, and
my answer is that I am not sure. I remember a conversation with a friend in
1985 who was sure that the Soviet Union would still exist, with the Communist
Party still in charge, well into the twenty-first century. I can remember a
different friend telling me in 1989 that she knew of an ethnic church
somewhere in the United States where people prayed daily for the freedom on
Czechoslovakia--which happened just months after I had that conversation.
Taiwan's transition to press freedom and free and fair elections was
surprising peaceful, and already happened quite a while ago. China's
government has been second to none in studying every example all over the
world of dictatorships clinging to power, but social scientists in China are
mostly very aware of how suddenly Hungary's and East Germany's and Romania's
and Yugoslavia's dictators fell from power when that was least expected. I
know from long acquaintance with Chinese people inside and outside China that
Chinese people aspire for freedom just like most people in the modern world. I
wish them the best in gaining a peaceful rather than a violent transition to
more freedom.

~~~
derleth
And if wishes were horses beggars would finally have some meat.

How likely is any of that?

~~~
sukuriant
I believe the whole point of that set of sentences was "We have no earthly
idea. Things could suddenly change or things could never change; but the trend
has been in these other countries for things to change, and for them to change
suddenly"

------
shimon_e
So much China discussion today.

"Suffice it to say that a large swath of manufacturers in coastal provinces
such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu has not been able to attract and
retain workers."

Actually what is happening is these regions never had a surplus in unskilled
labourers. They were depended on migrant labour and since 2011 the government
has put strict limits on the migrant labour. Limits much lower than demand. By
2016 migrant labour is to be stopped to major cities in these provinces. It is
all part of the current 5 year plan. The desire of the government is to get
low value manufacturing out of these regions. As it believes the economy has
develop beyond the need to depend on such manufacturing. This is an
intentional move. It is not due to a change in worker attitude or slowing
economy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-
year_plans_of_the_People%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-
year_plans_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
A bigger reason is that migrant workers can now find more opportunities closer
to home. Why bother moving to a coastal city when you get a decent job in a
city near your village? Perhaps building more factories inland is part of the
5 year plan, but I see it as an inevitable progression in China's development.

~~~
shimon_e
The inland factories are not the same type of low value factories that covered
the coastal regions. Those factories depend on low labour costs and low
logistics cost to be able to produce tons of junk; to be sent all around the
world and sold for cents in stores all around the world. The inland factories
came from major investments made in building sophisticated factories and
supply chains inland.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Its a bit more of both I think. The SMEs* on the coast are moving production
inland to take advantage of human and natural resources. They haven't gone
into villages yet, but definitely into cities like Chongqing, Wuhan, Lanzhou,
Urumuqi, the supply chains follow (which are also SMEs).

The big blocker to this movement so far have been coastal export zones, where
import tariffs on supplies are waved as long as the production must be
exported, which is why we in China pay so much for things "made in China." But
as China produces more for its own domestic economy, that becomes much less
relevant.

* Small and medium scale enterprises, usually private, compared to the massive SOEs (state-owned enterprises) and JVs (joint ventures).

~~~
shimon_e
I'm talking a lot less professional than SME. More like the equivalent to a
lemonade stand in the manufacturing world. Those businesses won't make it
inland without some logistics miracle. If you are involved you know what I
mean.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I'm not sure, like-kinds of small business always cluster together to solve
logistic problem. The side effect here is that its a race to the bottom since
all of these guys are doing pretty much the same thing. Its not sustainable
even on the coast, I think.

------
troyastorino
While the article starts out very interesting, towards the end the author
starts to sound almost delusional. He implies that although the introduction
of capitalist reforms seemed to help the Chinese at first, it has ultimately
been an instrument of oppression. In reality, the market-based reforms in
China are a classic case of the introduction of some capitalist principles
massively increasing overall quality of life. An article telling how factory
workers in China are offensively demanding better wages and better treatment
is fascinating, but the author's militant Marxist worldview made the whole
article a little less believable.

------
einhverfr
After reading the article, I can't help walk away with the idea that China has
massive internal tensions that will probably be resolved by violent revolt,
whether it takes place on a civil war model or on the model of the riots
during the fall of Soharto in Indonesia in 1999. What we are seeing, I think,
are indications of tensions and these will be released just as tension within
he earth is released by earthquakes.

~~~
intended
I suggest that the issue at hand is that all we see is shadow play - we have
incomplete data, which hints at many different ways the ground reality may be
moving.

Even if we had complete data, with a country like China there are many actors
pulling ground reality in different directions, so being able to arrive at a
binary state for the country seems unlikely.

The requirements of violent revolt are pretty extensive - most people endured
generations of hardship, and for them to overthrow the system the leadership
and hardship requirements are steep.

------
qwertzlcoatl
China Labour Bulletin [1], the NGO run by Tiananmen labour leader Han Dongfang
and labour expert Robin Munro and staffed by a talented group of activists,
gives a far more detailed and nuanced representation of mainland Chinese
labour issues.

[1] <http://www.clb.org.hk/>

------
arciini
To summarize the article:

1\. There have been many successful labour actions in the last 3 years, mostly
for higher wages. However, the demands have not been for better living
conditions.

2\. Most factory workers are migrants, and as such, their social lives back
home are separated from their economic lives in the coastal cities where they
work. In addition, obvious political movements are strongly suppressed, so the
workers present their strikes as solely economic. These prevent strong
activist movements for workers' rights from developing.

3\. Recently, companies have been moving factories towards the source of the
migrant workers: the interior. The author thinks that from this merging of
workers' social and economic livelihoods, the workers' rights movement will
bloom and lead to a true leftist movement in China.

------
mmanfrin
Linkbait title.

