China: Striking workers use social media to publicize grievances and build solidarity and support

How Weibo helped Dongguan factory workers get their voices heard

China Labour Bulletin, May 10, 2012

When the boss refuses to listen to workers’ grievances, those workers often have no option but to go on strike. But whether or not this tactic works sometimes depends on workers’ media advocacy skills.

On 7 May, workers at a Taiwanese-owned Crocs shoe factory in Dongguan heard that their monthly performance bonus would fall from 500 yuan to 100 yuan. Given that the bonus usually accounted for one fifth of their income, this was a big deal. They complained to the management who as usual didn’t bother to listen. In the afternoon of 8 May, around 1,000 workers, one third of the workforce, decided not to go to work.

But given the relatively isolated location of the factory, well hidden within a gigantic industrial park, the workers’ action didn’t get much attention, not to mention government intervention. When CLB called the factory office, the factory denied the bonus dispute by saying that workers wouldn’t know their bonus until the middle of this month.

One young worker, in anticipation of this official response, started posting strike information on his Weibo page in order to generate public support and media attention. To validate his account, he posted a photo showing the empty workshop during working hours.

CLB then posted a story about the strike on our Weibo page with the worker’s photographic evidence. The story immediately got the attention of labour rights activists and news reporters in Guangdong. Within one hour or so, the post had been retweeted more than 50 times.

In the late afternoon, the young worker told CLB that around five reporters had gathered at the factory gate but their attempts to get in had been foiled by security. The local labour bureau showed up as well.

In the morning of 9 May, CLB learnt that after government mediation, factory management had agreed to raise the bonus from the initial 100 yuan to at least 300 yuan. As a result the factory’s operations have basically returned to normal.

The young worker could not hide his exuberance when his effort to seek media attention during the strike paid off and reaped a substantial bonus increase for over one thousand of his coworkers.

In contrast, late last month, hundreds of employees stopped working at a Chongqing auto factory in protest against increasing workloads and stagnant pay levels over the last few years. The three-day strike got no traditional media coverage and only limited social media exposure and was eventually subdued by management’s threat of dismissal.

It is hard to imagine how the one thousand Dongguan workers’ voices could have been heard without one young worker’s persistent and successful media liaison, especially the use of Weibo. Microblogs have become a relatively free platform for workers, labour scholars, rights advocates, journalists and even trade union officials to interact and exchange information. But to get your particular cause noticed on this overloaded platform definitely requires skill and persistence. And it’s comforting to see China’s tightening control over this new social platform hasn’t balked workers’ attempts to get their voices heard.

Philippine / US troops joint training for counter-insurgency, and for US-Pacific domination

[Though both the US imperialist and comprador Philippine governments describe "Balikatan" (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises as normal, routine, and "humanitarian," they are actually part of more intense--and expanded--trainings for regional wars (which may challenge or extend the US' hegemonic role, or China's growing role) and for domestic Philippine counter-insurgency operations against rebel opposition, both communist and Islamic.  The pictures below express this very well.  --  Frontlines ed.]

Reuters, ‘Balikatan’ exercises
More than 4,000 American troops joined their Filipino counterparts for a series of military exercises in the West Philippine Sea,  an area that involves a territorial dispute that centers on a shoal not far from the Philippines’ main island of Luzon. The dispute centers on a group of islands known in the Philippines as Scarborough Shoal and recognized as Huangyan island in Chinese. Both Philippines and China have staked a claim on the islands, according to media reports.

U.S. soldiers inspect a Filipino soldier portraying a communist rebel killed in an ambush during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012.

A U.S. soldier patrol past a boy during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

U.S. soldiers walk past Filipino soldiers portraying communist rebels killed in an ambush during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012.

A U.S. soldier carries a Filipino soldier portraying a communist rebel killed in an ambush during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012.

U.S. and Filipino soldiers take part in an urban combat drill during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012.

Filipino and U.S. soldiers conduct a patrol during an ambush drill during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012.

Filipino and U.S. soldiers take part in an ambush drill during a Philippine-U.S. troops joint military exercise in Ternate town, Cavite city, south of Manila April 19, 2012.

Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China

US writers attack conditions at Foxconn plant and call for consumers to act

Paul Harris in New York

The Observer, Saturday 28 January 2012

[Employees work on the Apple assembly line at the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen in southern China. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty]

Employees work on the Apple assembly line at the Foxconn plant

Apple, the computer giant whose sleek products have become a mainstay of modern life, is dealing with a public relations disaster and the threat of calls for a boycott of its iPhones and iPads.

The company’s public image took a dive after revelations about working conditions in the factories of some of its network of Chinese suppliers. The allegations, reported at length in the New York Times, build on previous concerns about abuses at firms that Apple uses to make its bestselling computers and phones. Now the dreaded word “boycott” has started to appear in media coverage of its activities.

“Should consumers boycott Apple?” asked a column in the Los Angeles Times as it recounted details of the bad PR fallout.

The influential Daily Beast and Newsweek technology writer Dan Lyons wrote a scathing piece. “It’s barbaric,” he said, before saying to his readership: “Ultimately the blame lies not with Apple and other electronics companies – but with us, the consumers. And ultimately we are the ones who must demand change.”

Forbes magazine columnist Peter Cohan also got in on the act. “If you add up all the workers who have died to build your iPhone or iPad, the number is shockingly high,” he began an article that also toyed with the idea of a boycott in its headline.

The New York Times’s revelations, which centred on the Foxconn plant in southern China that has repeatedly been the subject of accusations of worker mistreatment, have caused a major stir in the US. Although such allegations have been made before in numerous news outlets, and in a controversial one-man show by playwright Mike Daisey, this time they have struck a chord.

The National: China’s workplace safety scrutinised in new report showing over 200 deaths a day

Daniel Bardsley (Foreign Correspondent, The National)

December 5, 2011

BEIJING: An accident at a chemical plant in eastern China that killed more than a dozen workers was nothing out of the ordinary in a country infamous for its lack of workplace safety.

Four died immediately in the blast at a melamine factory in Shandong province last month, while 10 more were pronounced dead at hospital.

Dozens died after an explosion at a mine in south-western China a few weeks ago, while a search through the news archives revealed countless other deadly accidents over the past month or so.

China’s workplace death rate is many times higher than those of other developed countries.

In the United Kingdom, for example, there were 171 worker fatalities between April 2010 and March 2011.

When population size is taken into account, China’s workplace death rate is more than 21 times higher than the UK’s.

China: Around 7,000 workers in Dongguan stage mass protest over wage cuts and dismissals

By Jennifer Cheung, China Labour Bulletin

Around 7,000 workers at a Taiwan-owned shoe factory in Dongguan took to the streets today, 17 November, in protest at salary cuts and the earlier dismissal of 18 managerial staff, according to posts on Tianya and a Southern Daily reporter’s microblog.

Photographs posted online showed large numbers of police on the street and bloodied workers who claimed to have been beaten by the police. Several other workers had reportedly been detained.

The strike at the Yue Cheng factory in Huang Jiang township was triggered by the dismissal of 18 managers in late October. The company claimed they had been dismissed because of the factory’s decreasing orders and sluggish business. But one of the managers told China Business News that the real reason behind their dismissal was that the factory planned to shift production to Jiangxi in a bid to combat rising costs in the Pearl River Delta.

“We’ve been loyal workers for over a decade in this factory. But now the factory decided to fire us on the sole excuse of bad business operations and cost pressures. How can they be so irresponsible?” one dismissed manager wrote on his internet post.

So far, the factory has not commented on the dispute. Yue Cheng is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings, which makes sports shoes for New Balance, Nike and Adidas. Its Taiwan-based parent company, Pou Chen Corporation is one of the biggest shoe manufacturers in the world.

Early this month, another Taiwanese shoe maker in Dongguan, Stella, saw more than 2,000 of its workers strike in protest at its relocation plans and issues related to compensation.

China protesters clash with police in Huzhou

(AFP) – BEIJING — Thousands of people have clashed with police and smashed cars in eastern China after protests over taxes turned violent, a rights group said Thursday, while authorities put the number in the hundreds.

Several police were hurt in the riots, which began as a protest by business owners over taxes in the eastern Chinese city of Huzhou in Zhejiang province, according to an official statement posted on a local government website.

Authorities said 600 people were involved in Wednesday’s protests, but local witnesses, bloggers and a Hong Kong rights group put the number of protestors in the thousands and said there were large numbers of police on the streets.

“At least 100 cars have been smashed, including 10 police cars, and one armoured police car has been burned,” the Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.

Growing ‘Occupy’ movement makes China nervous

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

by Mark Mackinnon, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Beijing—According to a Chinese joke, there are three parts to any newscast on the official Central China Television station.

The message in the first block of stories on each night’s news is: Your leaders worked hard today. This is proven with eye-glazing footage of President Hu Jintao and other top Communist Party officials meeting foreign dignitaries, ordinary Chinese people and each other.

For those still awake when the second block of stories airs, the theme is: The Chinese people are happy. Great things are happening in the People’s Republic.

The third bit is the counterpoint to the second chunk, and the message is equally simple: The rest of the world is in chaos. Europe is falling apart! The Arab world is on fire! Aren’t you glad you live in China?

When the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations began on Sept. 17, it nicely fit into the third block of that news agenda. American capitalism, China’s great rival, was in crisis (although it does put a few million people here to work), and the masses were taking to the streets against it.

A Chinese worker-poet writes on displacement

Waiting for Relocation by Wang Xuezhong

The wind of pulling down the houses is blowing hard

In directions all

Raising a cloud of dust

The life ever peaceful

Into worries does fall

 

Rumors prevail

The truth no one knows

Whatever it is

Our old home

At any moment

Will be sold to a boss with a big nose

 

Some say the boss is named Square

Some say he is named Round

Whether Boss Square or Boss Round

They both take oath

That the poverty should be removed

And a rich China should be found

 

Some say Boss Square will have a plaza of food built

Some say Boss Round will have a palace built

Some say Boss Square will have a hunting place built

Some say Boss Round will have an amusement park built

And some say the hunting place is actually a gambling house

And the amusement park is a whorehouse

 

Alas! Rumors prevail

The truth no one knows

In our five thousand years of history

There have been countless men and women

Waiting to be put on the bank

Like fish in the net then….

Land grab protest in S. China simmers for 4th day

Villagers from Wukan collect signatures in support for a protest in Lufeng, a city of 1.7 million, in the southern Chinese Guangdong province September 23, 2011

Sat, Sep 24 2011

By James Pomfret

LUFENG, China (Reuters) – Hundreds of farmers from two villages in southern China’s economic powerhouse Guangdong province persisted with a fourth straight day of protests on Saturday against brazen land grabs in the latest unrest to roil the region.

Lufeng, a city of 1.7 million, saw violent clashes with authorities earlier in the week, when villagers in the suburb of Wukan ransacked a government office and police station after riot police chased and beat up protesters.

No violence was reported in Saturday’s protests, with security forces noticeably absent.

“We don’t have weapons and armour, nor can we match them for strength, but we have the numbers to protect our village and the lives in it,” said Lin Zuliang, a farmer representative from Wukan who addressed a cheering crowd via loud speaker.

Modern-day Maoists worry Chinese authorities

[the following is from an article which appeared in the French press (see the entire article at http://observers.france24.com/content/20110923-china-modern-day-maoists-worry-authorities-commemoration-unrest-taiyuan)]

23/09/2011

A group of Maoists commemorating the 35th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan was violently broken up by police. Chinese authorities have no patience for these Mao-lovers, who seem to have forgotten the former communist leader’s authoritarian streak and retained only the idyllic vision of a fairer society. One Chinese Maoist gives us his account.The unrest occurred on September 9, when several dozen Maoists gathered in Taiyuan, chanted revolutionary slogans and delivered inflammatory speeches based on Mao’s Little Red Book. At the end of the demonstration, police tried to arrest the leader of the movement. Other protesters rallied to protect him, shouting “Long live Chairman Mao!” Nine people were arrested, but the organiser managed to escape. Most participants were active members of the website “Utopia”, the biggest leftist forum on the Chinese Web.

For this new generation of Maoists, the Chinese Communist Party has betrayed their leader’s roots by succumbing to capitalism and world trade. As a result foreign companies have been allowed to run amok in China, exploiting the country’s low-paid workers and wreaking havoc on the environment. In today’s China, where disparities between groups are rapidly growing, Maoists are attracting an ever-growing following among the poor and working classes, which have been hard hit by unemployment and inflation. Their growing popularity, however, has also drawn the wrath of local authorities……………………………

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“A small group of people controls the country and exploits the rest of the population”Hua Quiao was born in 1972 and lives in Shanghai. He’s a Maoist photographer and activist, and blogs for the website Utopia. Although members of Utopia usually avoid speaking to the foreign press, he agreed to speak to us through an interpreter.

“I’m a Maoist, and I feel both leftist and socially conservative. Utopia, the website I write for, owns a bookstore in Beijing. That’s sort of our headquarters. But our ideology is very controversial in modern-day China, and it’s often simpler and safer for us to communicate online.

Hundreds of protesters attack police station in China

September 23, 2011

(AFP) – BEIJING — Hundreds of protesters attacked a police station in southern China and ransacked vehicles, leaving dozens injured in the latest unrest to hit China’s industrial heartland, authorities said on Friday.It was the latest in a series of protests sparked by perceived social injustices in Guangdong, known as the workshop of the world for the tens of millions of migrant workers who toil in the province’s factories.

Rioters angered by a government land deal and rumours that police officers had killed a child wrecked vehicles and attacked police at the station in Guangdong’s Lufeng city, local authorities said in a statement.

Unrest first broke out Wednesday among local people but escalated after rumours of the child’s death spread, the statement said. On Friday, further protests were reported in a village nearby.

“On September 22 at around one in the afternoon, some villagers who had ulterior motives spread rumours about police killing a child, inciting some of the villagers to storm a border police station,” the statement said.

One insider with close knowledge of the incident, who refused to be identified, told AFP by phone that villagers took more than 20 government and public security officials hostage in the police station.

He said they were angry about the detention of four other residents, and only when these were freed did they let the officials go.

The Deadly Labor Behind Our Phones, Laptops and Consumer Gadgets

At this Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, China, 300,000 workers produce iPads, iPhones and other best-selling consumer items

by Sophia Cheng

Thursday, September 1 2011

The world’s largest electronics manufacturer, Foxconn Technology Group, has a plan for ending the grisly run of worker suicides that have drawn it unwanted attention over the past two years: replace human workers with one million robots. It seems the best way to interrupt rising global outrage over worker abuse in iPhone factories is to just get rid of the workers.

With a labor force of 1.2 million people, Foxconn is China’s largest private employer and biggest exporter. It manufactures familiar products for the U.S. market. Through contracts with Apple, Motorola, Nokia, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Sony, it makes the computers, phones, laptops and printers that we use every day—including the iPhones and iPads that many people will use to read this very article.

“Apple workers in China react to Steve Jobs’s news”

Kathleen E McLaughlin

September 2, 2011

BEIJING, China: As the rest of the world waxes nostalgic with tributes and accolades for Apple’s retiring CEO Steve Jobs, the factory workers in China who got sick while making Apple’s touchscreens remain unmoved.

Six months ago, factory workers in Suzhou poisoned two years ago by toxic chemicals at the factory wrote to Jobs directly, asking for his help in getting medical care and compensation for their illnesses and lost work time.

They never got an answer from Jobs. Two years after the chemical exposure and many months of medical treatment later, they still say they’ve never heard from anyone at Apple directly.In fact, it took Apple more than a year to acknowledge that 137 workers got sick on the job in 2009 at a components factory run by the Taiwanese electronics supplier Wintek, working under contract with Apple. The Wintek parts factory substituted hexane for alcohol in the manufacturing process to shave time off production of Apple touchscreens, but failed to outfit workers with proper safety equipment.

China migrants facing barriers in cities

[This article in the New York Times studies how China "manages population flows" as they put  it in typical bourgeois-speak terms. -- Frontlines ed.]

Chinese migrant workers

August 31, 2011

by Andrew Jacobs, in the New York Times

Xie Zhenqing spent 12 years transforming a collection of ramshackle houses into Red Star, a privately run, low-cost school for 1,400 children of migrants from poor rural areas. It took just a few hours this month for a government-dispatched demolition crew to turn the place into a jagged pile of bricks.

“What the government did to us is unconscionable,” Xie, Red Star’s principal, said angrily as parents of her students scrambled to find other arrangements before the start of the new school year on Thursday. “I’ll never work for a migrant school again.”

Red Star is one of 30 technically illegal private schools in Beijing that have been torn down or closed in recent weeks in an official campaign billed as a war against unsafe and unhygienic school buildings. In all, more than 30,000 students have lost their classrooms this summer. Advocates for the migrants warn that many of the capital’s 130 other unlicensed schools could be next.

On the revolutionary transformation of education during China’s Cultural Revolution

Higher Education Reform During the Cultural Revolution – A Milestone in the Advancement of Our Society

Written by Si Lan

Translated by Pao-yu Ching

Translator’s Note:  One of the most vicious attacks on the Cultural Revolution was launched against the Higher Education Reform that Mao Zedong proposed in 1968 and carried out for a few years during the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s proposal to reform higher education had two main focuses: that university learning had be closely linked to the needs of agricultural and industrial production, and that students who entered universities should be selected from the ranks of workers, peasants, and soldiers. Mao highly valued learning that combined theory and practice, or “learning by doing.” He was concerned that the expanded university education since the establishment of the People’s Republic kept a growing number of students apart from larger society and limited them to classroom learning for too long. As a result of this kind of higher learning, Mao feared that universities would create a new tier of elites who considered themselves above ordinary workers, peasants, and the broad masses. The concrete reform as it was carried out during the Cultural Revolution abolished the college entrance examination, which put great emphasis on book learning. Such examinations had been rooted in China’s feudal past. They favoring young people from intellectual families and put the children of workers and peasants at a great disadvantage. After abolishing the entrance examination, most high school graduates went to work first, and the work place (factories and mines, units within the agricultural communes, and military units) was given the responsibility to decide who would be sent to study in universities. The expectation was that after graduation they would then return to their respective units to work.

Education reform in universities faced strong resistance from many directions. The most important concern was the quality of graduates. Since the entrance examinations selected the ”best” students from the “best” schools, college professors and administrators believed that doing away with them would lower academic standards. Soon after Mao died, his vision of educating workers, peasants, and soldiers to be new leaders of the socialist society was denounced. The new “reformers” charged that worker, peasant, and soldier students were not suited for college education, and they lacked the cultural background to become the educated. They charged that China had wasted ten precious years during the Cultural Revolution by not educating its brightest and most talented youth. In 1977 the college entrance examination was reinstated. The Education Reform instituted during the Cultural Revolution was repudiated and abandoned.

The author of this article was selected from the countryside to attend the Central China Normal University for teachers. She majored in mathematics. In the article she writes about her life experiences, including how she got into the university, how they studied and learned, her life on campus, and what she did after she graduated. She also gives an overall evaluation of education reform during the Cultural Revolution. I think this is a good article for people who are interested in many of the newborn things launched during the Cultural Revolution and their significance in creating a new society even after its demise. For this reason I translated this article into English for a wider audience – PYC

July 21^st of this year (2011) marked the 43^rd anniversary of Chairman Mao’s directive on China’s revolution in higher education.

In July 1968 we were celebrating the successful completion of the Ninth Party Congress and our nation was covered with the joyful color of red. At this historical juncture Chairman Mao issued the important directive on how we should revolutionize our university education. He said, “We need to continue to build our university education. I am mainly referring here to the science and engineering programs in universities – however, we need to shorten the duration of these programs. We need to revolutionize our education. …University students should be selected from workers and peasants. After a few years of study in universities they will then return to production.”

Chairman Mao’s directive brought spring and rain to nurture the seeds of an education revolution, which were planted in the soil of socialism. Soon after the “July 21 Directive” workers’ universities, communist laboring universities and other new types of universities sprouted up everywhere. Waves of peasant, worker and soldier students poured into universities all over China from the countryside, from factories and mines, and from the military. They came to the new battlefields of continuing revolution, pledging never to disappoint the Party and the people who sent them there. They came with the determination to receive education, to administer the universities, and to use Mao Zedong Thought to reform and change the universities.