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Is there a labour movement in China?

John Chen

Looking out of Hong Kong’s central public library window, I can see the tail end of the 40,000-strong demonstration I have just left. Composed mostly of working people demanding universal suffrage, the march has become a somewhat symbolic event since the heady days of July 2003 when over half a million marched against the planned introduction of a draconian security bill – and by implication for universal suffrage. Perhaps even more dramatic was the surrounding of the Legislative Council (Hong Kong’s partially elected parliament) on 9 July by 75,000 demonstrators in what was an inspiring display of ‘people power’. These events effectively froze the government into inaction and sparked a three-month political crisis.

The campaign for universal suffrage in Hong Kong is a complex and ongoing movement. It is important not just because the demand is entirely justified, but also because mainland China remains a one party state which, more than any other developing nation, has positioned itself at the core of capitalist globalisation. Yet to date, it has lacked the class conscious punch capable of bringing Beijing to the table over universal suffrage. For most of the last century the British imperialists who ruled Hong Kong worked hard to avoid and, if necessary, physically repress expressions of working class consciousness by Chinese people in Hong Kong. When it did appear, it was often combined with an anti-colonial sentiment that was capable of paralyzing the colony and bringing the whole business of accumulating wealth for the empire to a stop. Witness the 1922 Hong Kong-Canton dock strike. Nearly a decade after the return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and despite enjoying widespread public support, Hong Kong’s independent trade unions remain weak at workplace level with almost no active collective bargaining and a very low level of strikes.

The day before this year’s 1 July march for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, over 10,000 mostly laid off workers from the mainland city of Xian rallied in front of government offices against new taxes on motorized three-wheeled bikes. Ferrying passengers on the machines has become a mainstay of family income for hundreds of thousands of former state owned enterprise (SOE) workers in the city who were sacked during a wave of privatisation, mergers, closures and downsizing that began in the late nineties. Their slogans were not overtly political: “we want to eat” or “our children need to go to school” or “we don’t steal, we don’t rob, we don’t fight, so why is our livelihood against the law?” The demonstration is testament to a growing willingness of workers – and other social groups – to publicly and collectively protest in mainland China. However restrictions on organising outside the government-backed trade union – and sometimes on organising within it! – are limiting the development of a class conscious labour movement capable of taking on the employers and upholding workers’ rights.

The author believes that while the conditions and history of Hong Kong and (mainland) China are very different, the key agent of change in the struggle for an end to class exploitation and inequality is the same: an ever expanding Chinese working class. Workers’ consciousness of their collective capacity to influence their own lives is a vital component of such a task. The aim of this article is to critically examine the labour movement on the mainland – if indeed it can be referred to as a movement. Unfortunately space precludes including Hong Kong in this discussion.

To help, I have borrowed three of sociologist Sidney Tarrow’s four components for measuring a social movement: collective challenge, common purpose and social solidarity. I hope that this will provide some structure and, with luck, avoid rambling. Tarrow’s fourth component, namely ‘sustained interaction with opponents and authorities’ is perhaps the most important. Political barriers to reliable information on such interaction preclude any meaningful comment in so short an article.[1]

Collective Challenge

There is considerable discussion on the rise of organised collective protests by workers either in employment or laid off. The existence of such protests and the reaction of the authorities has led to various conclusions: that Chinese workers cannot be pushed “too far” and the current high levels of exploitation will lead to a violent explosion of social dissent – the ticking time bomb theory (Han); that the state’s practice of detaining the leaders and/or representatives of working class protests combined with financial handouts to the mass of participants is defeating sustained collective challenge – the carrot and stick policy (Chen); that the objective historical conditions simply rule out a united Chinese working class with the capacity to exercise collective influence on government and society – the ‘state of disunion’ idea (Becker). These interpretations have and do carry varying amounts of weight at varying times and I will refer back to them where appropriate.[2]

It is difficult to predict how far capital and those who control it can push workers before – and if – an explosion of spontaneous social protest occurs. Certainly Chinese history demonstrates that the time bomb theory has its precedents. But as China moved out of the feudal age, sustained social upheaval and change has not been spontaneous but instead required high levels of organisation – the 1949 liberation led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) itself being a prime example. Moreover, if we are to see a labour movement emerge in China, it is unlikely that it will materialise from the tyranny of total exploitation in which workers by default lack the confidence to organise resistance and develop effective leadership. The Chinese media has regularly reported on horrendous working conditions, the mines being an obvious example. Yet it is clear that workers unfortunate enough to find themselves trapped in such severity are unlikely to collectively organise against employers. Indeed, in extreme examples where employers resort to direct violence, the main preoccupation of workers is – obviously – to escape the workplace in question. An effective and sustained collective challenge requires a collective and accountable leadership and this is more likely to emerge from workplaces where opportunities and space for class conscious resistance are present.

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[1]As such, Tarrow’s headings are used here only as a guide. Their inclusion should not be seen as an attempt to discuss Tarrow’s work on social movements in the context of China or elsewhere. Indeed to do so would be impossible without including the fourth component.

[2]See respectively: ‘A message to Beijing – Don’t push workers too far’ at http://www.china-labour.org.hk/public/contents/article?revision%5fid=38214&item%5fid=38213; ‘Paying the Price – Workers Protest in northeast China’ at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/chinalbr02/ ; and Jasper Becker, 23 March 2002, ‘Workers in a State of Disunion’, South China Morning Post.