By Michael Standaert
HONG KONG, Apr 11 2011 (IPS)

There is no “Jasmine Revolution” in China, but the Chinese government might be creating the seeds for one through its elevation of social stability above the rule of law, some experts say.

Over the last two months, authorities have taken advantage of anonymous calls for revolution first posted on overseas Chinese websites to launch an intense crackdown that has led to harsh sentences, detentions, disappearances and general harassment of lawyers, activists and writers with liberal voices that the government fears could spark social instability.

On Apr. 3 well-known artist and activist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing International Airport and has not been heard from since, according to his associates – leaving many analysts to speculate that his detention is a signal to those in Chinese society who may have felt “untouchable” during the recent crackdown, that they should not step out of line.

“If the authorities are even willing to come after someone like Ai Weiwei, they’ll show no reluctance to come after someone with less of a profile,” said Joshua Rosenzweig of the Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights organisation based in Hong Kong. “The goal seems to be to remove liberal voices and redraw the boundaries of what kinds of criticism will be acceptable. Because preserving stability is the priority, any possible impact on China’s image is secondary.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hong Lei, responding to a question about the arrest of Ai, said he was arrested “as a suspect for economic crimes” and said the international community had no right to interfere with the country’s domestic legal issues.

Responding to the annual U.S. report on human rights around the world issued Friday, which singled out China in particular for criticism, Hong said the U.S. should “stop acting as a preacher of human rights and interfering in other countries’ internal affairs”. So far these have been the only official responses to the recent crackdown, other than a smattering of editorials.

According to the Hong Kong-based organisation Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), 30 people have been criminally detained and another 30 have disappeared, during the recent crackdown.

In the harshest sentence yet, democracy activist Liu Xianbin, was given 10- years in prison on Mar. 25 for “inciting subversion of state power” – similar sentences could await others who have been arrested, CHRD says.

Stability vs. Instability, Not a Zero Sum Game

According to Rosenzweig, many, if not most, Chinese citizens are satisfied with the economic progress of the country “and expect the good times to continue”.

“They may be dissatisfied with many government policies, specific officials, or certain ways in which government operates, but they believe – in part because they’ve been told this over and over – that the alternatives would be much, much worse.”

Calls for any sort of revolution on the scale of the recent events sweeping and reshaping the Middle East and North Africa have remained virtual and widely unknown. This is largely due to government media control, but also because an increasingly prosperous middle class does not make the country ripe for revolt.

Zheng Jianwei, a lawyer from Chongqing municipality who focuses on labour and property rights cases, told an audience at Hong Kong University over the weekend that courts, police and the judiciary in general have “turned away from the people” in the name of maintaining social stability. China’s government may be debasing the legal system in such a way that people are forced to seek other outlets to vent frustrations they cannot satisfy in the country’s courts of law – thus leading to more instability.

Zheng said that China’s legal framework is in place to protect human rights, property rights and civil rights, but that if anything political or possibly “sensitive” or critical of the government the surfaces in court “there will always be a problem”.

Beijing-based human rights lawyer Wu Hongwei said, “sometimes cases are simply dismissed” if the government is involved.

Both Zheng and Wu listed a myriad of problems that surface in civil, administrative and criminal cases in China involving “sensitive” issues related to property, religious practice, labour laws, and general human rights cases.

If sensitive cases arise, the lawyers say they are often not allowed to meet clients, clients are not served with the proper paperwork, clients are sometimes given verbal notices to report to labour camps, clients send their documents in by mail and these are misplaced or lost, or judges are pressured to protect local businesses and told how to rule by local officials.

Often evidence is collected illegally or selectively, authorities pressure clients to fire their lawyers, clients are forced to drop charges if government officials are involved, people can’t afford good lawyers, police statements are tampered with by judges, and judges sometimes dismiss cases if they are unhappy with what the outcome will be, they say.

“The major problem is about the enforcement of laws,” Zheng said. “If our rights are protected under the law, it is not because of loopholes in the laws, but because of enforcement.”

There are currently “no effective ways to seek redress” for many people, Wu said, especially in cases involving sensitive issues like labour rights, land requisition, or religious beliefs.

“Currently many lawyers are not favoured by the government,” Zheng said. For the past five years, he said, “I really feel there are risks with the legal professions. There are a lot of struggles with political or career risks.”

Because of an inability to express themselves in courts of law in China, many lawyers have resorted to the Internet to voice their concerns, Zheng said. But even if they stick to facts and discuss issues in a neutral way, they are censored or restrained by authorities.

“Some lawyers have to resort to this to get any problem resolved because the system has lost its effect, and they cannot express themselves through the legal process,” Zheng said. “This is a very significant trend now in China.”

Wu said: “How can we protect people’s rights when our own rights as lawyers are violated all the time?”

But both Zheng and Wu are able to practice within the system as it is because they know the boundaries within which they can operate.

“I haven’t tried to push the limits,” Zheng said. “That’s why I’m here today.”

Hostile Foreign Forces

Because information on these actions by the government is suppressed in China and domestic media is not allowed to report on it, very few Chinese realise the crackdown is occurring. This leads to a situation where only foreign media are reporting on the situation, and one that government can use to play on nationalistic impulses.

“As long as enough people identify their interests with maintaining the status quo, the government can count on support for its crackdown,” Rosenzweig said. “Especially under conditions where information about arrests is limited.”

Poon Sin To, a political commentator in Hong Kong, said that “Beijing wants to kill anything in the seed sowing phase so it doesn’t grow” – referring to the anonymous calls for a “Jasmine Revolution”.

“They are very sensitive to foreign involvement because of historical reasons,” Poon said. “There is very little room for the survival of objecting voices.”

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By Michael Standaert
SHENZHEN, China, Nov 11 2010 (IPS)

Labour unrest appears to be far from over in southern China, although striking workers at the Japanese-owned Ricoh Elemex factory in Bao’an district in this city were recently forced back to work by local officials accompanied by around 400 armed police officers.

Several workers there told IPS that the their strike ended on Oct. 27, after 15 days. Two days later, around a dozen armed police were still keeping watch. One officer, who did not want to give his name, said they had been assigned to guard the factory and its 1,300 workers for over a week to prevent another strike.

But although this particular strike – the latest against the backdrop of labour unrest this summer – has ended, workers and activists in the Pearl River Delta region say that all signals point to more unrest because workers are struggling with stagnant wages and lack of overtime hours amid rising inflation pressures.

“Workers lives are very hard at the moment,” Bao’an labour activist Zhang Zhiri told IPS. “Extra orders are down sharply since the financial crisis abroad and workers can’t get overtime. Their wages are rising a little but they can’t keep up with inflation.”

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s consumer price index (CPI) rose 3.6 percent in September compared to the same period last year and was expected to rise in October, though NBS officials said on Nov. 2 that inflation for 2010 would likely be around 3 percent.

“Workers here get about the same amount of pay as what workers in the Yangtze River Delta region and in central China can get,” said Zhang. “But inflation here is much higher compared to those areas.”

Guangdong’s CPI rose around 3.4 percent in September compared to a year before, provincial statistics show.

According to a survey by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, 25 percent of China’s workers have not had a pay raise in more than five years, says a Nov. 2 report in the state-run ‘Global Times’ newspaper.

To discourage copycat strikes, a near-total domestic media blackout was imposed on the latest strike at the Ricoh plant in Shenzhen, with no national or provincial coverage in Guangdong province allowed by authorities. At least two reporters from Shenzhen newspapers were able to report on the strike after it ended, IPS confirmed.

One 21-year-old worker at the Ricoh plant named Fu said that workers were encouraged to strike by mid-level management who feared they would be fired during a forthcoming merger with a larger Ricoh plant nearby.

Fu and other workers, who did not want to give their names, said that the company promised a pay rise of 100 yuan (15 U.S. dollars) per month on top of the basic salary of 1,100 yuan (165 dollars), and that anyone let go because of the merger would get 3,000 yuan (449 dollars) in severance pay plus one month’s basic salary.

“We are not satisfied with the result,” Fu said.

The strikers also demanded a new chairman of the factory’s labour union since the current one also serves as vice president there, but this was rejected. The strikers said that workers at the larger Ricoh factory nearby also tried to strike, but that management control at that plant was too strong.

“The government has repressed this strike,” said one worker, refusing to give his name. “We just want higher wages like other people get paid in factories nearby.”

Fu said that the new wages are supposed to be paid on Nov. 20. “If we don’t get the wage they promised, we’ll have another strike. They’ve lied to us before.”

By the end of September, Guangdong’s provincial government was expected to release new regulations that would allow workers to democratically elect representatives to their company labour unions.

But according to activists here, pressure from the Hong Kong manufacturing associations as well as local Chinese business federations had caused provincial officials to shelve the idea for the time being.

Zhu Jiang, a labour activist in Shenzhen’s Longgang district, told IPS that similar regulations about democratic consultation that were supposed to have been in by now at companies in Shenzhen municipality have also been put on the back burner.

“Once the policy on collective consultation comes out, workers will be able to require more,” Zhu said. “This will make it hard on both businesses and some government departments.”

At the Honda plant in Foshan where the summer strikes started, labour relations are tentatively getting better, workers there told IPS. On Oct. 22, the company met with workers to discuss the election of representatives to their labour union, and the first round of voting has started.

“Things are going smoothly now, but we’ll wait to see what happens,” said Honda worker Deng Yufei, 23. “We won’t know of the real impact until the election is finished.”

Zhu says that the recent suicides at Foxconn plants in Shenzhen and the strike at Honda this summer showed that workers will eventually find ways to express their opinions, no matter what regulations are in place. “Workers need ways to find their voice, but the truth is they have fewer and fewer ways to speak out,” Zhu said. “If conditions don’t change, there will be more cases like (strikes and suicides).”

Zhang believes the real issue to be addressed is Chinese workers’ inability to elect independent labour unions.

“The draft regulations don’t allow for independent third- party labour representation,” Zhang said. “Most Chinese labour unions can’t really perform their duties to workers. Most of the time the workers’ side is represented by government labour unions or a labour union organised by the company. How can a puppet labour union organised by the company represent the workers? It is ridiculous.” (With additional reporting by Qu Yunxu.)

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By Michael Standaert
XIADIAN, China, Aug 30 2010 (IPS)

Feng Jun’s fight against a local government and the steel mills he believes polluted the water that killed his daughter has cost him nearly everything.

A collage of photos of Chinese teenager Feng Yanan, over whose death from leukaemia her father went to court. Credit: Michael Standaert/IPS

The tragedy for the 44-year-old former farmer, now a landless migrant worker, was the loss of his 16-year-old daughter Feng Yanan to leukaemia on Jun. 19, 2007. His second daughter, Feng Weinan, now 14, was diagnosed with leukaemia at the same time as her sister in early 2006, but recovered through treatment.

To cover the over 600,000 yuan (88,000 U.S. dollars) he spent on his daughters’ medical bills, Feng sold all of his property, his car, his motorbike, his fish ponds, his flock of ducks, his fruit trees, his horses. He cannot get a job in Xiadian here in China’s north-eastern Hebei province because people are afraid of hiring him, he said.

Feng Jun blames the girls’ leukaemia on untreated wastewater discharged from the local steel plants into the Baoqiu River. He says Yanan’s death is the direct result of waste the plants piped into the river just 15 metres away from the land he once owned at Xiadian village, a poor settlement a little under 50 kilometres south-east of Beijing.

He has proof about the high levels of pollution, he says, showing a stack of stamped results of official water quality tests. Tests taken in March 2007 by the a local environmental bureau from his 40-metre deep well showed arsenic levels three times higher than what the government considers safe. Manganese levels were four times higher. Another test of the well in 2006 showed levels nearly the same.

Yet the biggest difficulty for Feng Jun has been proving the link between the cancer his daughters had and the pollution from the plants. While the exact causes of leukaemia are still uncertain, numerous studies have shown that genetic and environmental factors can increase the risks of getting it.

In October 2008, Feng filed a lawsuit against one of the steel plants, claiming it was directly responsible for the death of Yanan and sought compensation to cover her medical costs. The case was finally opened in March 2009, and took over a year to resolve before the Xiadian court ruled earlier this summer that there was not enough evidence to prove a link between Yanan’s leukaemia and pollution from the steel plant.

Testing of the water in Xiadian is regularly done once a year, though these are usually just surface water tests and the steel plant is notified well ahead of time about when the tests will occur, said Feng. None of the surface water tests that Feng has seen have shown abnormal levels of arsenic of manganese, data that the court used to shoot holes in his case.

“Environmental cases like this are difficult in China because these plants are big contributors to local taxes, so officials will do anything to keep those plants operating.” said Li Jian, the lawyer who has been helping Feng with his cases.

Yang Fuqiang, an environmental expert at World Wildlife Fund office in Beijing, said in a recent interview that as many as 40 percent of the cases in some courts in China are environment-related, but that few are getting heard. “The judges don’t know much about the environment or how to handle these cases,” Yang said. “We need to increase the capacity of local courts. We need more environmental lawyers.”

“The steel plants won’t stop working – it’s such a big part of the local economy,” remarked Wang Weihong, Feng’s mother. “The local government thinks Feng Jun is right but they don’t know how to handle it.”

In Xiadian, at least 50 of the 3,300 residents have died of various cancers over the past several years. Privately, people say the number of cancer deaths is closer to 70, and they believe most of the cases can be traced back to the polluted water.

Across China, dozens of similar rural “cancer villages”, where acute pollution has given rise to higher rates of cancer, have sprouted up during the past decade. During this period, heavy industry has increasingly moved out of the larger cities and into the suburbs and rural areas.

Sun, a 61-year-old shopkeeper who did not want to give her full name, said she personally knew about five people who have died of cancer in the past few years in the village. “Liver cancer, stomach cancer, leukaemia,” she said, ticking them off. “The pollution comes from the river. In the summer, the smell is very bad. We can’t drink from the local wells anymore. We had to stop last year. Now we have our water piped in from the next county.”

Zuo, a 24-year-old woman working in a restaurant here, who also did not want to disclose her full name, said pollution had been a problem since she was a little girl, but that it had grown more serious in recent years. Married for a year, she is waiting to save up money to leave the village before having children because the pollution is so bad.

“People who don’t have the money to leave have to stay,” she said. “There are three big steel plants in such a small place. People have just gotten used to the situation. There’s not much hope.”

Excerpt:

By Michael Standaert
FOSHAN, China, Aug 24 2010 (IPS)

Faced with strikes in recent months, China’s southern Guangdong province is crafting revisions to labour regulations that would allow workers to negotiate pay increases and elect representatives to bargain on their behalf.

This is certainly good news, but workers, activists and experts are uncertain about their effectivity in promoting labour rights. They ask if these could end up being used by the government and the government-affiliated trade union to squash further attempts to hold strikes.

Deng Feiyu, a 23-year-old worker at the Japanese Honda plant in Foshan city that was at the centre of the latest wave of strikes, said he and his fellow workers have not heard of the proposed regulations. “No one in my department knows about this,” said Deng. “And we always share information.”

The latest draft of the regulations, which state media reports say could be released in September, say that if one- third of the workforce demands negotiations, the company has to oblige the request and its trade union must organise elections for workers’ delegates to engage in these talks.

Workers say the problems with China’s labour environment go far deeper to issues around basic labour rights and the independence of labour unions. These, they add, would affect how far the new rules can make a difference.

Although China now has tougher laws requiring companies to offer contracts to workers, many still do not get them and other basic requirements such back wages, or recently increased minimum wages.

Luo Fushang, a 36-year-old factory security guard in Dongguan who was let go from his job after trying to get a contract negotiated, said: “There are so many people that want my job, even without having a contract. There are many rules, but few of them have really been implemented.”

Labour activist Xiao Qingshan, well-known in the Dongguan area for wrapping himself in signs listing the laws that companies have broken when he protests on behalf of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta region, doubts that the new rules can have much of an impact as long as basic labour laws are not followed.

“How can workers get higher wages when their back wages aren’t even paid?” he asked.

Liu Kaiming, director of the Shenzhen-based Institute of Contemporary Observation, says the regulations would not work as long as Chinese workers are bound to bargain through the government-affiliated All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) — the only legally allowed trade union in China — rather than form independent unions.

“The ACFTU is more concerned with social stability than with the concerns of the workers,” Liu said.

The problem revolves around a system where management has all the power — and the union is tied to the management, Liu points out. “Any worker that wants to work against that system and against the union will have problems,” he said.

“The labour union doesn’t have any use because the bosses pay the union,” Xiao said. “If the labour unions really did anything, I wouldn’t need to do what I do now.”

Still, some like Geoffrey Crothall, director of communications at the China Labour Bulletin, a labor- advocacy group in Hong Kong, point out that the new regulations at least allow workers to propose wage increases without first having to go through the government-affiliated union.

“Hopefully, more and more workers will gradually start to use this avenue,” Crothall said. “If it is effective, more will follow, but if the process blocked or hindered by management, then I think workers will continue to use strike action to pursue their claims.”

“If we just stop to work and try to persuade people to support a negotiation, it will become another strike,” Deng said, referring to the proposed requirement that companies start negotiations if a third of workers want such. “We just don’t have time. That’s why we need a labour union, a system to help us.”

Workers at the Honda plant in Foshan are to have a pilot vote this year to elect representatives to their union, which will still be managed by the local ACFTU office. Deng and other workers say no date for the vote has been given.

“Actually, that’s why we finally agreed to stop the strike,” said Deng, referring to Honda’s agreement to allow workers to elect union leaders. “I don’t think they dare postpone the election indefinitely.”

Previous union representatives at his Honda plant were appointed by the company, Deng said. “They were on the side of the company, and didn’t express our demands. This is why we need our own union to replace that useless one.”

Before the strike, the basic wage at the Honda plant was around 900 yuan (132 dollars) per month, but this has been raised to 1,290 yuan (190 dollars), Deng and other workers say. “We all graduated from technical school or college. Some of us even graduated from universities, but we get the same wages as other less-educated workers or even less than them,” Deng said. “That’s not fair.”

Liu says there will likely be more strikes, not less, because of the regulations. By his count there have been more than 500 strikes in the past three years, mostly focusing on wages. But the issues behind some, like the Honda strike in Foshan, have gone beyond wages and into the political realm as younger, more educated migrant workers like Deng demand more representation.

Most of the strikes have been in foreign companies because the workers there are “the elite of migrant workers,” said Liu. Xiao agreed, saying that they are better educated and more aware of their rights.

An early August survey by the Federation of Hong Kong Industries of its member companies in the Pearl River Delta area found that about 15 percent had faced strikes in the first six months of 2010.

It has since asked the Guangdong government to modify or delay implementation of the new labour rules due to the labour shortage and escalating wage costs, reported the newspaper ‘The Southern Metropolis Daily’. (With research and reporting contributed by Qu Yunxu.)

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By Michael Standaert
GUIYU, China, May 2 2010 (IPS)

Like many who have profited from the electronic waste trade in this southern Chinese town, hospital administrator Lin Banghong does not live there. “I’ve worked here 10 years and haven’t gotten sick,” he said.

At a makeshift e-waste workshop in China's Guiyu town, a migrant worker cooks computer motherboards over solder to remove chips and valuable metals. Credit: Jeffrey Lau/IPS

For migrant workers who come from across China to burn, smash and strip old television sets, computers, mobile phones and copy machines for their valuable metals and computer chips for one dollar an hour, 10 hours a day in the 5,000-plus workshops in the village, living here is no luxury.

The price they may be paying is their long-term health, say Chinese researchers.

The world’s highest levels of dioxin – environmental pollutants that threaten human health – have been recorded in Guiyu and are released into the air by burning of plastics and circuit boards coated with flame retardants to extract gold, platinum, copper and other metals, a 2007 report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found.

The main source of pollution is the burning of plastics in long blockhouses to retrieve metals. It also comes from heating circuit boards over molten solder to remove chips and metals in the hundreds of small, family-run workshops scattered around Guiyu.

The Lianjiang River running through Guiyu is classified as the most polluted in China’s southern Guangdong province. High levels of copper, nickel, cadmium, lead, mercury and arsenic have been found in both surface water and sediment in the river.

A United Nations Environment Programme report released on Feb. 22 says that China generates 2.3 million metric tonnes of electronic waste each year domestically, second only to the United States, which produces 3 million tonnes.

Much of that U.S. waste ends up being exported to developing countries like China, where imports of electronic waste are banned but not enforced, says Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network. About 1.7 million tonnes of e-waste are processed each year in Guiyu, says the local government.

Puckett says most of what comes into Guiyu is imported from abroad. “There’s no hard data, but it’s probably above 90 to 95 percent (overseas waste),” says Puckett, who has visited Guiyu three times since 2001. “I really looked at the writing on the machines and types of plugs. Guiyu doesn’t get a lot of Chinese waste.” Recently published studies by researchers at Shantou University Medical College show high levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) from flame retardants, lead, cadmium and chromium in blood samples of infant children of e-waste workers.

A 2008 study produced by the Shantou health researchers found that 81 percent of blood samples from Guiyu infants has “significantly higher levels of blood lead.” Another 2008 study found high cadmium levels in 20.1 percent of infants there. High chromium exposure leads to DNA damage in infants.

The research indicates that these are leading to stillbirths, low birth weights and premature deliveries and impacts on the children’s growth rates and neurobehavioural development.

Arlene Blum, an expert on the health effects of chemicals in flame retardants at the University of California Berkeley in the United States, says PBDEs have been associated with cancer, thyroid effects, learning and memory problems, decreased sperm quality and reduced male hormone levels.

Little is known about the health impact of e-waste processing on adults toiling in the workshops of Guiyu.

Huo Xia, head of the research team at Shantou University, says that the bosses at the e-waste workshops resist having workers take blood tests. “The workshops are attached to private homes, so it makes it hard to get in,” says Huo, whose research is now being funded by the U.S. Ford Motor Co, in an interview. “The workers who come here are temporary, and once they get sick, they go back to their villages. It’s hard to track them.”

Lin says that there are “more newborns with cerebral palsy and more cases of cancer” in Guiyu, “but we can’t guarantee these are caused by pollution. None of the tests absolutely confirm the relationship between these diseases and pollution.”

It has become harder for Huo and her researchers to obtain blood samples of migrant workers’ infants in Guiyu, now that Lin’s hospital has stopped allowing the sampling because it “makes a lot of work for us”.

It was unclear if the hassle over collecting and storing samples was the real problem for Lin and the hospital board. “We are worried our support for the research will attract the attention of the local government,” he admits. “We are a private hospital and don’t want to get into any trouble.”

With new national regulations on e-waste processing set to come into effect in 2011, Guiyu’s government made plans in 2006 to turn it into a high- technology, environmentally friendly industry.

But the risky way of recycling may not go away so easily. “China is never going to be able to properly manage their e-waste as long as they allow this massive magnet of Guiyu to exist,” says Puckett.

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