In May 2007, the 24 member states of the European Union (EU) for the first time formally invited both China Labour Bulletin (CLB) and the New York-based group Human Rights in China (HRIC) to attend the Experts’ Seminar part of the China-EU Human Rights Dialogue meeting in Berlin, Germany. The EU formally notified the Chinese government about these invitations and the proposed participation of CLB’s delegate, labour rights expert Cai Chongguo. At a meeting of the EU’s representative in Beijing and the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Chinese officials expressed strong concern over these arrangements, but the Chinese delegation was nonetheless dispatched to Berlin.
During the opening ceremony of the Experts’ Seminar on May 10, however, the head of China’s government delegation again protested the presence of CLB and HRIC, which he characterized as “anti-government organisations,” and demanded their exclusion from the meeting. When the EU delegates refused China’s demand, the Chinese delegation head ordered all its experts and scholars to withdraw from the meeting. (Regrettably, the EU had earlier acceded to Chinese government pressure by un-inviting another expert NGO, the San Francisco-based Duihua Foundation.) As a result, the entire two-day event had to be cancelled.
As a non-political group dedicated to advancing the cause of labour rights in China, CLB is in no sense an “anti-government organisation”. To the contrary, we seek positive engagement with the Chinese authorities in order to further the vital goals of resolving the growing tensions between management and labour in the Chinese workplace and, on a wider-scale, reducing the growing social disparity between rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless. The China-EU Human Rights Dialogue takes place twice a year, once in a European member state capital, once in Beijing. This year’s main topics were labour rights and fair trials, and so CLB’s participation in the discussion would have been entirely appropriate.
Although the EU-China dialogue meetings have been in progress for over a decade, very little improvement has been seen in China’s human rights and labour rights situation. The country’s economy has developed rapidly but the plight of the workers has become an issue of growing international concern. We believe that CLB, as an acknowledged expert group with 13 years’ experience in monitoring and analysing Chinese labour rights issues, especially in the area of labour law, would have made a valuable and constructive contribution to the dialogue process.
The EU’s invitation to CLB to take part in the Berlin meeting demonstrated its serious concern over the current labour rights problems in China, and also a desire to contribute constructively to their resolution by seeking the views of expert non-governmental groups. The participation of CLB would have benefited both workers in China and the wider EU-China dialogue process. We therefore regret the decision of the Chinese government delegation to withdraw from the meeting, and we applaud the firm stance taken by the EU delegation in refusing to exclude CLB and HRIC.
To read, in full, the (translated) speech that was due to be delivered at the Berlin dialogue meeting on May 10 by CLB’s delegate, Cai Chongguo, entitled "Why Can’t Regulations Safeguarding Labour Rights be Implemented?" click here