This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 34, October 2-8, 2005
China: A Cauldron of Looming Conflict
A noted China scholar, Prof.
Pao Yu Ching, says that China has lost “its socialist elements,” with its
currently overheated economy about to burst. “China becoming a superpower is
nothing but U.S. propaganda,” she says.
By Carlito Parungo AMSTERDAM - It is April
2001 and the people of Ta-ching are restive. Located in northern China, Ta-ching
is witness to a series of demonstrations being launched by its 700,000 workers,
almost half of whom were summarily laid off from their jobs. The workers are incensed at
the factory owners who fired many workers without even any compensation - and at
the government ignored their plight and cries for justice. Perhaps out of sheer
desperation, some disgruntled workers and supporters have resorted to radical
action: they place a bomb at the local government office. The bomb explodes,
killing the mayor, the deputy mayor, the local Party secretary, and nine others,
including accidentally three workers who took part in the incident. The government responds by
sending some 50,000 Army soldiers who then encircle the factories and “restore
peace.” To the soldiers’ surprise, it is they who are encircled by the workers
and the local people. The people of Ta-ching are geared for a fight. Eight months later the
impasse would be resolved, with the government and factory owners forced to pay
the workers higher separation pay.
Widespread “Most probably you never
heard of the Ta-ching incident in the news, did you?” Pao Yu Ching, a retired
professor emeritus of Marygrove College in MIchigan, U.S., and a well-known
China scholar, posed this question to her audience during a lecture she gave
last Sept. 10 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The lecture was sponsored by the
International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) and was attended by a
"multi-national" audience, some even coming from Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg
and the United Kingdom. Professor Ching currently
lives in Taichung, Taiwan. She said many of such
incidents were never reported before despite their newsworthiness. But of late,
Ching observed that media people in China have no choice but to report on the
peasant uprisings and workers’ strikes and demonstrations because of their
increasing frequency and scope. “Mass actions in China now
average 70,000-80,000 a year,” said Ching. “That means that every day not fewer
than 200 demonstrations are taking place all over the country.” Workers’ and peasants’
grievances are long, asserted Ching. “For the workers, these are massive
retrenchment and high rate of unemployment, unpaid back wages, absence of
housing benefits, decreasing pension (or the lack of it), and other economic
issues confronting them.” In the countryside, the
peasants’ main issue is their continuing displacement as a result of widespread
landgrabbing and unemployment, added Ching. The situation of the
workers and peasants is really terrible these days, lamented Ching, who has gone
to China twice this year. “To an outsider, China is one country that is on its
way to becoming a developed country. That couldn't be farther from the truth,
and judging from the widespread dissatisfaction of its toiling people, China may
soon find itself in deep trouble,” Ching averred. Goodbye,
communes… Ching described the Chinese
people’s growing impoverishment and discontent as resulting from the series of
reforms that the Deng clique instituted immediately after its successful power
grab in 1979. She explained: “The first
policy was to break up the communes, producing individual peasants again. Deng
succeeded in implementing this by increasing the purchasing price of rice,
wheat, corn, and other agricultural products by 20 percent and another 50
percent if a peasant was selling above quota.” “Until 1984, or five years
after the policy was put in place, peasant income was climbing by 15 percent a
year,” added Ching. “So the peasants were happy. They were even exclaiming that
it was a good policy because they were doing better now that their income was
increasing.” That proved to be
short-lived and unsustainable, however. In the succeeding years, the increase in
income slowed down from 5 percent to 1 percent. From 1997 up to now, with the
total farm output remaining the same, the purchasing price of agricultural
products has even gone down by 30 percent. With the high taxes imposed
on their income, many peasants became bankrupt and were eventually forced to
find jobs in the cities. With little to do in the rural villages, Ching said,
100 million peasants are now working in the cities. Ching thought of Deng’s
policy a “smart” one because “it was easier to do reforms in agriculture than in
industry.” She added: “By dissolving the communes, Deng practically broke up the
basic alliance of the workers and peasants.” And the
“iron rice bowl,” too Deng moved on to implement
the so-called economic structure reform in 1985 and labor reform in 1986. The economic structure
reform was a key change in the industry, Ching said. “In the past, state-owned
enterprises did not have any calculation of profit or loss. If there was profit,
it went to the state; if there was a loss, the enterprise would get a subsidy.
This was the only way the state could plan the economy. If it wanted to develop
heavy industry, more money would flow to it, even if it was not making money.
There was no calculation of profit or loss. There was no reason to do that.” With the introduction of
the profit-and-loss concept, however, investment priorities favored those
enterprises that were making profits. Ching added that managers, whose salaries
and benefits were raised tremendously, were also given blanket authority to sell
or lease out state assets that were performing poorly. This resulted in
millions of workers losing their iron rice bowl or permanent employment that
until then was guaranteed under a socialist state. Aside from being retrenched
as a result of bankruptcy, workers would be fired by the managers even with the
flimsiest of reasons. Instead of hiring workers for permanent tenure, managers
would also avail of contract workers. This, according to Ching, is what the 1986
labor reform introduced. However, the implementation
of the labor reform met rough sailing because of the strong resistance by the
workers. Faced with the prospect of losing their iron rice bowl, the workers
initially succeeded in frustrating the attempt of the state to apply this policy
to state enterprises at that time. In the course of time,
however, Ching said the state managed to weather out this resistance by selling
out state assets, at giveaway prices, to people who had connections. There have
also been many cases of managers taking the profitable part of state enterprises
and setting up other companies, thus forcing state enterprises to bankruptcy and
displacing workers, Ching said. Since the middle of 1990,
Ching said more that 10 million workers have lost their jobs as a result of
Deng’s labor reforms. Good life “If one goes to China today
and sees all those high-rise buildings, he will immediately think that
prosperity is everywhere,” Ching said. “In the supermarket, he will find
everything and may conclude that people are really having a good life. Yes, in
fact some people do have a good life…a very good life.” After June 4, 1989 (the
Tiananmen uprising), Ching said the government made a conscious decision to
“bribe” the intellectuals and those occupying high government positions by
making them partake of the good life. But, she said, this has
only increased the gap between the haves and have-nots, a situation that a
recent report of China’s official news agency Xinhua acknowledged as “provoking
alarm.” “The most affluent
one-fifth of China's population earns 50 percent of total income, with the
bottom one-fifth taking home only 4.7 percent,” the Xinhua reported. “The income
gap, which has exceeded reasonable limits, exhibits a further widening trend. If
it continues this way for a long time, the phenomenon may give rise to various
sorts of social instability." Ching: “But the super-rich
live extremely well. And what they earn are from legal sources.” What is not
visible, according to Ching, is the income coming from corruption especially in
the government and in the remaining state enterprises. “There is a joke in China
that if you line up all government officials and kill the even numbers, say 2,
4, 6, etc., that means the same number of guilty ones will go free,” Ching said
in jest. On the other hand, Ching
said, the workers earn an average of 600 yuan renminbi (US$ 74) a month, or
sometimes it can go up to 1,000 yuan. Yet they also don’t enjoy any housing
benefits or health care, she added. Aside from living the hard
life, workers and peasants have to face police brutality, which Ching described
as 10 times worse than in Taiwan where she is lives. “I remember a story shared
to me about the two Chinese girls who were on their way home. One was not
carrying a proper ID for her bicycle and the police decided to arrest her. When
seen again, the girl was dead and said to have been raped before being killed.
The town was in uproar and demanded that those involved be punished. But instead
of arresting the guilty policemen, the police hierarchy found someone else, a
poor man, and bought his life from his family for 10,000 yuan.” According to Ching, life in
the countryside is no better because the new bureaucrats are far worse than the
old-time landlords. She said they have more power today and are more abusive.
“There was a case of
peasants who organized themselves to question the exorbitant taxes being imposed
on them. They elected 12 people to represent them in asking the management to
check the books and where the taxes were being spent. Instead of being heard,
three of the peasants were beaten to death. Just like that.” Many peasants used to take
the train to Beijing to seek redress, thinking the central government would do
something about police brutality and landgrabbing as well. But Ching said there
have been cases that some peasants failed to reach Beijing because they had been
kidnapped along the way. She said that the ruling
Communist Party has practically stopped recruiting members among the workers and
peasants, adding it is now the intelligentsia that is lured into it because of
the many perks attached to being a Party member. Ching was also surprised
that many of today's generation of youth and students are not even aware of the
revolutionary tradition of their elders The Party's work among the
masses has been reduced to organizing guided tours to some historical places
that were visited by Mao during his time, for example Yenan, in order for it to
have a semblance of being a communist party, Ching said. “In fact, to many average
Chinese I spoke with during my visits there, the ruling Communist Party is
everything but communist,” Ching said. “And if you ask me, today’s China has
totally lost all its socialist elements of any kind,” she added. Big
capitalist power? To the question whether
China is set to become the next capitalist powerhouse, Ching’s answer was a big
no. She enumerated six reasons why China would not develop capitalism
successfully: China’s agriculture is
backward. It is not modernized. Agricultural reform did not succeed. Irrigation
is gone. The forest is in terrible shape. Farmers did not want to give up their
land. All this added up and failed to attract capital to invest in agriculture. There is a small internal
market because the salary of workers and the income of peasants are kept to a
minimum. Ninety percent of factories have overcapacity. China is using exports to
create employment and income. The U.S. is the biggest importer. It is borrowing
money from China to buy from China. China depends on import of
technology and of parts. China gave up so much to
enter the World Trade Organization (WTO). The service industry was given up. The
computer, medical, and other industries were opened up. By 2010 foreign banks
will be just like national banks. Of the top 1,000 banks, China has 16. Of
these, 15 are already controlled by foreign banks. Bank of America and Royal
Bank of Scotland are investing billions of dollars to take over local banks. In the last 25 years,
China’s environment and natural resources have been severely damaged. The
country is over-utilizing its own resources. Water is now very scarce and there
is even shortage in oil. Ching concluded that the
growth of capitalism in China is not sustainable. “China becoming a superpower
is nothing but U.S. propaganda. In fact, the Chinese economy is overheated. It
is due to burst some time.” With the increasing number
of working people realizing the betrayal of the Deng clique, Ching said that
China is in for interesting times. She said the efforts of some people there to
study and do something about the current situation in the country are
encouraging. Ching expressed her wish
that someday all the scattered mass actions in the country take a more organized
form and gain more success, just like the Ta-ching uprising. Anyway, to end the Ta-ching
story… To celebrate their
victories, the workers erect a memorial in honor of their three co-workers who
died earlier and the four others who were arrested and executed for the bomb
explosion. These fallen workers may be criminals in the eyes of the Chinese
government, but for the Ta-ching workers they are martyrs who died for their
cause. Bulatlat Carlito Parungo is a
freelance journalist and web designer. He is currently based in Amsterdam. © 2005 Bulatlat
■
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With 200
demonstrations every day
Contributed to Bulatlat