Americas
Europe
Africa & Middle East
Indian subcontinent
Asia Pacific
News
Analysis
Economy
Environment
Oppression
The Basics
Science &
Culture
Marxist Theory
History
Publications
Links
Workers Power Global, London
Strikes and protests involving tens of thousands of workers have shaken major industrial cities in Chinaâs north eastern provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning. They have led to potentially major advances in the workersâ resistance to the effects of privatisation and plant closures.
In Daqing, on March1st, 3,000 workers laid off from the oil industry demonstrated demanding payment of their allowances. On March 4th, 50,000 workers picketed the company headquarters and disrupted the rail network and were met by paramilitary police and a tank regiment. Two days later, 40,000 returned to the city amid reported confrontations with paramilitary forces.
According to reports monitored by China Labour Bulletin in Hong Kong, the redundant workers belong to a new union which is also growing in other oil industry centres as far away as Xinjiang in Western China and Sichuan in the South West.
The spread of workersâ resistance reflects the scale of lay offs being forced through by the new bosses in the industry. Sinopec, for example, the biggest corporation in the oil industry has already laid off 250,000 and is planning a further 100,000 redundancies over the next five years.
The background to the Daqing closures reveals all too clearly what capitalist restoration has meant in the industry. PetroChina was formed in 1998 out of the assets of the state oil industry in Northern China. Its new management, still dominated by the representatives of the Communist Party, prepared it for listing on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges by a "restructuring" which left them with all the recently developed plants and divested the older ones, including Daqing. Workersâ resistance was dissipated by agreements to pay both welfare and heating allowances. It is the non-payment of these that has sparked the protests.
Massive cuts have also been seen in the other core industries of the North East, steel and textiles. In Liaoyang City these led to the holding of joint demonstrations by seven thousand workers from six factories in early March. This was followed by demonstrations of some 30,000 from 20 factories from March 12 to March 14. Here too, workers have elected their own delegates to represent them but their leader Yao Fuxin, a worker laid off from the Ferroalloy plant, was arrested.
Despite reports of confrontations with police and paramilitary units, there appears to have been no widespread military repression of the most recent strikes. This may reflect more than just local commandersâ hesitation. Beijing itself is clearly worried by the scale of unrest in a year which will see the beginning of the transfer of power from the current leadership centred on Jiang Zemin.
The Financial Times believes fear of unrest lies behind a deceleration in the implementation of many of the reforms China introduced in order to qualify for membership of the World Trade Organisation at the beginning of this year.
If that is so, it is likely to prove only to be the calm before the storm. In January alone, Foreign Direct Investment into China amounted to US$ 2.966bn, one third above the previous year, and contracted investment reached US$7.187bn, very nearly double last yearâs figures.
The reason for this massive increase is that China has now begun to open up areas of the economy previously closed to foreign investment. Inevitably, that investment will lead to restructuring and dislocation as it has done in other sectors.
As the reports from Daqing and Liaoyang show, the destabilisation caused by capitalist restoration and development has not only restructured industry but has also encouraged workers to restructure their own organisations.
In the coming year, as more industries and regions are sucked into the whirlpool, and the bureaucrats of Beijing jockey for position in the leadership race, Chinaâs workers need to extend and deepen their own independent organisations to include not only the traditional industries but also the new.
Read more
China joins the World Trade Organisation
China: Membership of WTO signals new attacks on workers
Restoring capitalism in China
Capitalism triumphant in the 1990s
Planting the seeds of capitalism
Let a thousand enterprises bloom
The role of foreign investment in capitalist restoration
Special Economic Zones
Capitalist restoration and the state
Capitalist restoration in Central and East Europe
Russia: the death agony of a workers' state
The political and social revolution against Stalinism and capitalist restoration