An explosive growth is taking place in the scale and intensity of
opposition to the free market social policies of the Chinese Stalinist
regime. The number of demonstrations and protests being reported to the
journal by its mainland sources in the Chinese Ministry of Public
Security has soared from an average of 80 per day in 2001, to more than
700 per day in December 2002.
...
Such is the level of concern in Beijing that Hu Jintao, the newly
installed leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), convened an
emergency 12-hour session of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee on
December 12 to take reports from the party’s Central Office, State
Council Office and Ministry of Public Security. Hu Jintao was reportedly
determined “to prevent the worsening of the situation and the eruption of
crisis”.
...
The Ministry of Public Security reported that protests, demonstrations
and gatherings by urban workers reached 350 per day by the end of
November and 500 per day in early December. In order to prioritise their
response, the Chinese police now use a four-rank system to classify
protest actions: less than 100 people is “small”; 100 to 500 people is
“medium”; 500 to 2,000 participants is “large-scale”; and over 2,000
demonstrators is ranked as “special large-scale”. In urban areas, at
least 30 “large-scale” demonstrations are taking place every day, as well
as 240 “medium-scale” protests.
In the rural areas, peasants across 15 provinces have reportedly engaged
in recent protests against low living standards, high taxation and
official corruption. Since mid-November, more than 250 rural protests
have taken place involving over 1,000 people, including seven estimated
at over 10,000 people. According to Cheng Ming, many of the protests
assumed militant forms, with peasants storming local government buildings
and clashing with police.
...
The major workers’ protests widely reported during December include:
* December 2-7, Yaonan, Zilin province: 2,000 miners from the Yaonan
coalmine zone protested on December 2 against non-payment of wages and
the abysmal safety standards. Five days later, a mine explosion killed 32
workers. Over 10,000 miners held a demonstration, carrying a banner
denouncing the government and calling for the arrest and public trial of
the mine bureau directors.
...
* December 10, Datong city, Shanxi province: 10,000 workers laid-off by
state-owned mining, construction and chemical plants surrounded
government buildings over the failure of the local authorities to pay
pensions and provide medical coverage. Workers accused officials of
plundering the budget for their personal gain. The imported luxury car of
the provincial vice-governor—which cost 50 times a workers’ annual
income—was set ablaze in protest.
...
* December 14-16, Pingxiang mine, Shanxi province: 5,000 miners sacked by
the state-owned mine stormed the main city government building. Upon
being laid-off, the workers were paid just six months salary, with no
guarantee of long-term social security. The miners carried a banner
reading: “Who rules the country? Corrupt officials and the privileged
classes”.
Major protests in rural areas in the same period included:
December 7-14, Yulin, Shaanxi province: An estimated 80,000 peasants
rallied together for an “anti-taxation and anti-exploitation” conference.
The weeklong assembly drafted a petition threatening a “revolt” if the
central Beijing government does not provide redress.
...
The demonstrations reflect the desperation among China’s working class
and rural poor. The opening up of the country to massive foreign
investment and its transformation into the cheap labour manufacturing
centre of world capitalism has produced upheaval for hundreds of millions
of people. While a thin layer has enriched itself by functioning as the
middle-men for the major transnational companies, employment in the
former industrial and mining provinces in China’s north and north-east is
being decimated by the scaling back of state-owned industry, while large
numbers of peasants are being driven off the land and into the coastal
export economic zones to look for work.
The recently-published official Social Blue Book 2002 records that 48.07
million workers were laid-off from 1995 to 2000, “the equivalent of the
total population of [South] Korea”. Surveys among the urban population
led the Blue Book to estimate that 100 to 200 million urban Chinese are
“dissatisfied” with their social conditions, with 32 to 36 million being
“extremely dissatisfied”. The paper warned that “unemployment, official
corruption and the inequality in wealth distribution” were the main
reasons for the alienation.
Alongside the unrest in the old industrial and rural areas, the weeks
leading up to the Chinese New Year witnessed an outpouring of pent-up
discontent in China’s major manufacturing cities on the coast, such as
Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Thousands of workers who wished to return to
their home towns and villages for the holiday engaged in angry protests
against employers who had failed to pay wages in time. According to
reports, over 72 percent of workers regularly experience delays in the
payment of their wages.
The Chinese government, as it pursues its capitalist policies, is acutely
conscious that it is sitting on top of a social time bomb. According to
Cheng Ming, Hu Jintao reportedly warned the new Politburo that the state
of society was “forcing people to rise up, to rebel and to seek to
overthrow the leadership of the Communist Party”.
Link:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/chin-f12.shtml
