By Andy Ford,
On August 11th Chinese labour rights activist Shen Mengyu was bundled into a car by plain clothes officers of the state security bureau. Her abduction is only the latest chapter in the long running struggle of a group of workers in the Jasic Technologies factory, Shenzhen, South West China, to form a trade union.
At first the workers at Jasic, which manufactures welding equipment and industrial components, only wanted to form a branch of the official union, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), and initially, on June 7th, permission was given. The workers wanted to deal with workplace issues of denied breaks, alteration of shift times without notice, and a system of fines called the “Eighteen Jasic Prohibitions”. The formation of such unions is entirely within the law and in fact the right to do so has been used, firstly to head off the development of more radical unions, and secondly, to help re-balance power in the workplace at least to a limited extent. The Chinese government has sporadically encouraged union organisation and has from time to time called on the ACFTU to be more proactive in defending workers, as it tries to push the Chinese economy towards more consumption of consumer goods, a policy that has to include higher wages.
The ‘Pingshan Incident’
However, the management of the plant are well connected with the local Communist Party and the permission from the ACFTU was suddenly withdrawn on July 12th. The next week, two of the workers‘ leaders, Liu Penghua and Mi Jiuping, were assaulted by company thugs. On July 20th the two came to work but again were assaulted, thrown out of the plant and then arrested by the police. Twenty workers went to the police station to demand their release as they had done nothing illegal, but they too were assaulted and arrested by armed police. The incident, in Pingshan, Shenzen, was filmed and made its way, through heavy censorship, onto the internet. A wave of online solidarity saw petitions and signatures from all over China in support of the workers, and a number of labour activists came to Shenzen to support the Jasic workers. One of those people was Shen Mengyu, now arrested and held at an unknown location somewhere in the city.
Shen Mengyu
Shen Mengyu has a masters degree from a top Chinese university. But instead of landing a comfortable graduate job she went to work at a car parts factory in southern China where she attempted to organise the workers into a union, for which she was subsequently sacked. Shen describes herself as a ‘Maoist’ and has been reading the works of Marx and Mao independently and obviously drawing her own conclusions. A video of the workers protest shows a young woman consumed by a passion for justice for workers, addressing the crowd without even a microphone. No wonder the mighty Chinese Stalinist state is terrified – not of Shen, but of what she represents and what she could become.
Rising workers struggle
The Jasic dispute comes on the back of a rising tide of workers struggle in China, where strikes are no longer confined to individual enterprises, albeit enterprises employing tens of thousands of workers. In April there was a multi-province strike of crane drivers, who are key to the massive construction boom across the county. This followed an impressive national strike by truck drivers in April against rising costs, police harassment and exploitation by the hiring app used by the companies booking trucks. The Chinese working class is now huge and is beginning to be conscious of its power.
The ‘Eight Young Leftists’
The regime has probably responded so disproportionately to a simple request to form a branch of the official union in Shenzen because of the involvement of youth as advocates and supporters of the workers. After all, it was precisely when workers involved themselves in the 1989 students’ movement that Deng sent in the troops to Tiananmen Square. The CCP leadership will have read their history books and will also remember how the Hungarian events of 1956 were sparked by the ‘Petofi circle’ which was a study group of both workers and academics. In this context the case of the “Eight Young Leftists’ is instructive.
Last November the police stormed a reading group of students at Guangzgou University, alleging various illegal activities. All the students were doing was to read, discuss and study the works of Mao and current social affairs. The group also organised cultural activities with workers including dancing in the city’s public squares. Nevertheless, four were initially charged with “Gathering crowds to disrupt order”, a catch-all charge used by the authorities against dissenters, and then granted bail. Four other young people went into hiding
An online petition was signed by many prominent intellectuals and those arrested were released. Over the next weeks the Eight have published open letters (see link below this article), detailing their activities and treatment by the police and in January a group of elderly Maoists in Xian assembled with pictures of Mao, calling for release of those arrested in the name of “The masses of Shaanxi”. A group of students in Nanjing revealed that they had been through a similar experience last year and in Zengzhou a Mao-Tse Tung Thought group expressed support for the Eight through repeated vigils with flags and banners. It is likely that under the smothering censorship there is a ferment of ideas amongst the youth, looking back to the ideas of Mao, and maybe of Lenin and Marx also.
Since the events around their arrest and release, the Eight have continued with their activism, most recently at a Shanghai sanitation workers strike where they wrote:
“We are the “Eight Young Leftists” (左翼“八青年”) who were arrested and forced into hiding. Our charges have not yet been dropped and our families are often harassed [by the police], but no matter how many tribulations lie ahead, we will never give up “giving voice to the class without a voice.” When the sanitation workers went on strike, we immediately travelled to Changning in Shanghai to bear witness to their struggle for survival.”
Despite its apparent invulnerability the dictatorship of Xi and the Chinese Stalinists is resting on increasingly narrow foundations. Big events lie in store and if the Chinese working class can make its presence felt a proper socialism with Chinese characteristics can be constructed.
August 31, 2018
Use this link to see a video produced by the workers at Jasic:
