China Labour Bulletin appears in the following article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
On the back of China's workers,
Economic lift is tainted by exploitation
Jehangir S. Pocha
San Francisco Chronicle
15 October 2006
Change has added a lot of new words to the Mandarin vocabulary, and the most ominous is "guolaosi," or death from over-working.
Although China is ostensibly still a communist country, independent trade unions are banned here and every night 200 million Chinese workers go to bed in overcrowded dormitory rooms after working 15- to 18-hour days in Dickensian factories. And their lot is likely to get worse before it gets any better.
Cheap labor -- along with market reforms, disdain for intellectual rights, disregard for the environment and cheap capital from state-controlled banks -- is what has allowed China to offer global investors a unique combination of 19th-century business practices and 21st-century infrastructure that has attracted more than $800 billion in investment since 1979.
Recent moves to protect workers' rights and empower labor unions may be more window dressing than reality.
Environmental devastation has forced Beijing to adopt more-sustainable policies, and Washington is pushing for China to respect intellectual property rights. Last, China's decision to privatize its banks means they can't subsidize China's gargantuan state-owned companies.
This leaves China's cheap and disempowered labor force as the country's only unchanged competitive advantage.
For example, Shanghai-based American architect Ben Wood says China's construction boom would be impossible without cheap labor.
"An American bricklayer makes about $40 an hour, and in China the rate is less than $1 a day", said Wood, emphasizing that this allows China's grand buildings to be built for about 20 percent of what they would cost in the United States.
Chinese officials say they realize that wages cannot be controlled indefinitely and that China must move its economy up the value chain if it wants to compete. But that process could take decades, and until it happens, China's growth will continue to be built on the back of its workers.
"The exploitation here is getting harsher", said Han Dongfang, a union advocate with the China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong. "On one hand we have better laws than ever. But in reality, there is no enforcement."
Activists who try to promote change face harsh reprisals. About 35 labor activists are languishing in Chinese prisons, according to human rights groups. Pang Qing Xiang, who spent nine months in prison for organizing unpaid workers in his factory, said detainees are routinely abused.
"To them we were nothing," said Pang, 60, who is from northeastern Liaoying province. "Certainly not people who had a right to demand anything, not even pay. When I told them work without pay is slavery, they just laughed."
Pang was punished not so much for what he stood up for as for daring to stand up at all.
"No one knows where a union ends and a political party begins," said Zhang Bijian, head of the China Reform Forum in Beijing, betraying a common fear here that a Solidarity-type union led by a local Lech Walesa could throw China into the same chaos that gripped Poland and the ex-Soviet Union in 1989. "A gradual approach is always more successful, and it's good for everyone. All the other ways will be not good to our people in the end."
But Han, the union advocate, said the argument that independent unions will automatically lead to unstable democracy is a red herring used by vested interests that benefit from the continued exploitation of workers.
"In the U.S. in the 1920s, it was argued that trade unions would turn the country into a communist state, but it didn't happen," said Han. "Now, ironically, in China they are saying trade unions will turn the country into a democracy. I don't think so."
Conditions for workers employed by Western companies are generally better, but not by much. In July, thousands of workers at the Merton Co. in southern Guangdong province that made plastic toys for U.S. companies, such as Disney, Mattel and McDonalds, rioted. They were being paid just $72 a month (the local minimum wage), required to work 11 hours a day, six days a week, and not compensated for overtime, according to New York's China Labor Watch.
If Western diplomats and trade representatives have been disturbingly silent about labor standards in China, which clearly violate norms set by the International Labor Organization, it's partly because they're loath to rock a system that's allowing Western corporations and governments to reap huge profits.
A recent survey of 1,800 U.S. businesses in China by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing found that the profit margins for 42 percent of them were higher than their average worldwide margins.
More significantly, the Chinese government, which benefits enormously from its labor-driven export economy, has invested almost $300 billion in Treasury bills and $500 billion in other U.S. securities. Thus, China helps fund the U.S. deficit and keeps U.S. interest rates low. This in turn allows U.S. consumers the cheap credit with which to buy loads of Chinese goods, and then the cycle begins anew.
The one crack in the Chinese government's grip on labor has come from China's fledging legal system.
Han said he and other supporters have brought 30 labor rights cases to Chinese courts and won most of them. One case, in which they were representing jewelry workers who'd been fired after they developed silicosis, a lung disease from breathing mineral dust, set a record for worker compensation: $62,500.
Han's success is partly rooted in the fact that he and his associates seek out the most compelling cases and focus all their efforts on them.
"This way we can help only a few people but we can make sample cases and show people that laws can be very useful if you use them correctly," he said. "More importantly, through this legal battle we also provide the idea that workers should get together."
Such grassroots actions are all Chinese labor activists can manage, given the forces arrayed against them. But tales of their exploits, which are whispered among workers' groups, are creating a discernable change in China's mind-set.
"The period of relying on leaders is already gone," Han said. "Today, slowly, people are understanding that they have to fight for their own future."
That's potentially seditious talk in China, and like many Chinese who realize they're on thin ice, Han relies on an old trick to claw his way back -- he quotes the great helmsman.
"As Mao used to say, the evolution of history does not follow the will of individuals," he said. "Today, China is living in a time of darkness, but that does not mean there is no hope. Respect for people's basic rights, limited work hours, decent compensation, better working conditions, laws that are enforced -- all these things will happen because it is natural that they do. That's just the process of civilization."