Dragon Rising by Jasper Becker

Author:Jasper Becker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 2006-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Eight thousand workers are employed at this Guangdong Province shoe factory. If China is now experiencing an industrial revolution like Europe’s of the 19th century, can trade unions be far behind?

Deng Xiaoping’s Marxist critics, like the ideologue Hu Qiaomu, said that the SEZs were no better than foreign colonies and accused Deng of selling out the country to foreign capitalists. The Chinese Communist Party rose to power, after all, by helping to organize and lead the workers’ protests in Hong Kong, Canton, and Shanghai against wages and conditions in factories that were, indeed, often owned by foreign capitalists. Around the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square is a frieze that celebrates the workers’ struggles to establish free-trade unions and gain better working conditions.

The trade unionists in Britain’s industrial revolution were pioneers, so it took decades of protest to introduce social reforms that since have become accepted international norms. Deng’s critics were seemingly justified in charging him with returning China to social conditions that existed in the early 19th century. If this accusation is valid, then one must ask whether a similar trade union movement will follow, and how long it will take.

The right to strike was enshrined in the 1954 constitution, but this right was taken away when the constitution was amended in 1982, on the grounds that because the proletariat were the masters of this state, they would only be striking against themselves. Chinese workers, which at that time meant those in state-owned factories, had to belong to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). No other trade unions were or have ever been allowed to exist. Yet the migrant laborers rarely enroll in the official union. In effect, what has happened in Shenzhen is that the state has allowed nonunionized workers to take away jobs from expensive union workers.

Workers both inside and outside the ACFTU do go on strike, even though they break the law when they do so. Still, a couple of hours by bus from Dongguan, I traveled to Shenzhen to meet some girls who had just taken part in a successful strike in November 2005 at the Hai Yan Compuline Factory, which makes DVDs and CD players for export.

The Hai Yan factory is interspersed among middle-class housing developments and brightly lit shopping malls. There are many other factories here; Hai Yan shares a gate with Le Conte Chocolate Factory. As I arrived, I encountered a strange scene: Shenzhen’s white-collar class was out enjoying Saturday evening shopping or dining while troupes of pale, small girls dressed in work uniforms of different colors walked arm and arm, going on or off shift.

Outside the Hai Yan factory gate, I ran into a man who had seen the strike. “About a thousand girls blocked the traffic on this street for about six hours,” he said. Then he added, “You can be sure it was all started by outside agitators.”

It was such an odd comment that it made me look at him twice. He turned

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