[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 14 (Thursday, February 14, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E168-E169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBER CHINA'S WORKING CLASS

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 13, 2002

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, President Bush will be traveling to the 
People's Republic of China on Saturday, February 16, 2002 to meet with 
the leaders of that country. He will be discussing issues ranging from 
the war on terrorism to improving trade relations between our two 
nations.
  I view this trip as an important and positive part of the ongoing 
U.S.-China dialogue. However, I believe it is imperative that we do not 
ignore the suffering of the working class in China. I recently read an 
article in the Washington Post about the Shuangfeng Textile Factory 
located in Dafeng, China. According to the Washington Post, corruption 
has engulfed the firm, leaving thousands of workers with little pay and 
little hope. Top executives of the firm have forced workers to buy over 
priced company stock and to accept pay cuts of up to 50%, which amounts 
to $25 to $40 a month. Reportedly, resistance to those demands has 
resulted in some employees losing their jobs.
  The workers attempted to acquire the attention of local and federal 
officials by signing petitions and staging strikes. They sat in the 
factory for days and nights, not even returning home to see their loved 
ones. During those nights, police stormed into the factory and used 
force to drag them outside. The police also made dozens of arrests to 
try and put an end to the employee uprising. In spite of all this, the 
government apparently took no action to investigate the case. 
Eventually, the workers were defeated and had to accept the terms of 
management and return to their jobs with broken spirits. I hope all of 
my colleagues take the time to read the portion of the Washington Post 
article that I have submitted for the Record.

[[Page E169]]

  Instances, such as the one at the Shuangfeng Textile Factory, are 
cause for great concern. People in China are crying out for justice and 
they must not be ignored. I urge President Bush to raise this issue 
with the leadership of China and work with them to help improve the 
situation. More over, the President should press China to improve its 
labor, environment, and human rights record in general. It is important 
for us to take advantage of our dialogue with China to help put an end 
to the suffering of so many people.

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2002]

                 ``High Tide'' of Labor Unrest in China


      Striking Workers Risk Arrest to Protest Pay Cuts, Corruption

                           (By Philip P. Pan)

       Dafeng, China.--On the fourth night of the strike, 
     management cut off the heat. The 2,000 workers occupying the 
     Shuangfeng Textile Factory responded by huddling together and 
     wrapping themselves in thick blankets and surplus military 
     coats. Even as the temperature neared freezing, they refused 
     to leave.
       Not long ago, banners on the factory walls reminded workers 
     they were ``masters'' of the Communist state. Now, the same 
     workers were camped on a cold floor between rows of rusty 
     spinning machines, nursing their grievances over boiled water 
     and biscuits.
       Mostly middle-aged women, they spoke quietly of pay cuts 
     and worthless stock shares, of corrupt officials and missing 
     pension funds, of being cheated in China's rough-and-tumble 
     transition from socialism to capitalism.
       They spoke, too, of the risks they were taking by fighting 
     back.
       Three times, police had tried to expel them from the 
     factory, dragging women out by the hair, jabbing others with 
     electric batons. Three times, the workers had managed to hold 
     on. Now, there were rumors a military police unit had been 
     summoned to this small city 150 miles north of Shanghai.
       ``We know this is dangerous,'' said one young woman sitting 
     in a corner of the vast factory floor near large spools of 
     white cotton yarn. ``But it's too late to be scared now.''
       Then, glancing out a window, she added nervously: ``The 
     police should be here soon.''
       The battle in Dafeng, which began Dec. 16 and ended less 
     than two weeks later in defeat for the workers, is part of a 
     larger story playing out across China's fast-changing 
     industrial landscape. Two decades after the ruling Communist 
     Party adopted capitalist economic reforms while continuing to 
     restrict political freedom, growing numbers of Chinese 
     workers are risking arrest to stage strikes, sit-downs and 
     other demonstrations.
       In many ways, these protests are acts of desperation by 
     people struggling to survive without the help of effective 
     labor unions, courts or other institutions that provide 
     checks and balances in a market economy.
       As thousands of state factories are closed or sold, workers 
     who once were promised lifetime job security and benefits now 
     face mass layoffs and, sometimes, the loss of their savings 
     to corrupt managers. Their willingness to fight back presents 
     a thorny political problem for a party that has always staked 
     its legitimacy on providing a better life for the working 
     class.
       It is difficult to estimate how often these protests occur, 
     in part because local officials often try to conceal them 
     from their superiors.
       But one recent government report acknowledges the country 
     is in the midst of a ``high tide'' of labor unrest, with the 
     number of workers participating in strikes more than doubling 
     in the first half of the 1990s alone. Another report in an 
     internal party publication said there were 30,000 protests of 
     significant size in 2000, or more than 80 incidents per day.
       The authorities often respond to these protests by trying 
     to appease the workers; at other times they react with force, 
     sending in police and jailing the most outspoken 
     demonstrators.
       ``We have no idea what's going to happen next,'' the young 
     woman in the factory here said that night as the strike wore 
     on. Like many interviewed for this report, she asked not to 
     be identified out of fear she would be arrested. ``The 
     government doesn't want to back down, and neither do we.''


                          A Secret Bankruptcy

       The Shuangfeng Textile Factory lies on the outskirts of 
     Dafeng, a quick drive from the city's glittering downtown 
     into a dreary neighborhood of run-down buildings and dirt 
     alleyways. Off the main roadway, past a row of ramshackle 
     shops, a large crowd of workers gathers in front of the 
     factory's creaky metal gate.
       There is no picket line, just a group of men and women in 
     heavy coats milling about restlessly in the middle of the 
     road, stamping their feet to keep warm under a pale yellow 
     street lamp. Their faces are lined from years of squinting 
     while operating spinning machines and, more recently, from 
     lack of sleep. Some of the workers are smoking; others have 
     been drinking. Every time a car drives by, the crowd gets 
     jittery.
       Past the gate is the factory itself, a deteriorating 
     complex built in 1931, before the Communist revolution. It is 
     the city's oldest and largest textile mill, one of several in 
     this cotton-growing region that produces yarn and cloth for 
     the nation's garment factories.
       In the mid-1990s, Beijing began pushing local officials to 
     either get rid of small, money-losing state firms like the 
     mill or make them profitable. What followed was a disorderly 
     process in which the government often sold stock in factories 
     to the workers, but retained control as the majority 
     shareholder. China's Communist rulers had not yet embraced 
     full privatization.
       ``Some people invested willingly. Others didn't think it 
     was a good idea. But in the end, we all handed over the 
     money,'' said one worker in the spinning division. ``If we 
     didn't give them the money, we would lose our jobs.''
       Last November, the company suddenly and secretly filed for 
     bankruptcy. The factory boss and several other managers 
     emerged as the firm's new owners. The workers discovered what 
     had happened only weeks later, when a local newspaper 
     published a short item about the transaction.
       They immediately suspected they had been victim of a ``fake 
     bankruptcy,'' a common phenomenon in China in which corrupt 
     managers hide a factory's assets, declare bankruptcy and then 
     purchase the firm themselves at a reduced price, often with 
     money they have embezzled.
       The man who gained the most in the bankruptcy was Shi 
     Yongsheng, the mill's manager and now its largest 
     shareholder, according to workers and local officials. Shi 
     was appointed to run the mill only three years ago after a 
     career managing several smaller state factories in Dafeng, 
     including a tannery and a fur plant.
       Residents describe him as a close friend of one of the 
     city's deputy party secretaries. Workers said he bragged to 
     other managers about his plan to slash salaries. Shi did not 
     return telephone calls, and a government spokesman said Shi 
     was too busy to speak to reporters.
       But a company document obtained by workers showed that the 
     factory owed them $14 million, including $2 million for the 
     shares they had purchased and $3 million they had paid toward 
     their pensions. In addition, the document said, the 
     government had provided the factory with nearly $8 million to 
     help it cover its debts to workers and provide those laid off 
     with welfare payments.
       A government official in Dafeng confirmed the figures were 
     accurate. Where all that money went, though, remains a 
     mystery.
       ``What happened to our money? How did we go bankrupt?'' 
     asked one longtime employee, who asked that he be identified 
     only by his surname, Zhang. ``We had a lot of questions. No 
     one gave us any answers.''


                         Strike Without Slogans

       Instead of an explanation, the workers got a pay cut. On 
     Dec 13, managers began calling in employees and demanding 
     they sign new contracts slashing their salaries by half, to 
     between $25 and $40 a month.
       The workers revolted. In a meeting, an employee tore up the 
     contract in front of her supervisors, workers said. In 
     another, a worker denounced factory managers, saying, 
     ``Officials live off the labor of the workers!''
       With resistance rising, the company tried to make an 
     example of two outspoken employees in the spinning division, 
     young mothers named Chen Feng and Liu Landing. On the morning 
     of Dec. 16, the factory hung a large poster on the front gate 
     declaring that ``the two comrades have separated from their 
     posts and from the factory.''
       ``I had worked in the mill for seven or eight years, and I 
     have an 11-year-old child to support,'' said Chen, 29, by 
     telephone several weeks later. ``So, of course, I was 
     depressed.'' Chen declined to discuss why she was fired, but 
     she confirmed what happened next: ``The workers went on 
     strike, and they asked the company to let me go back to 
     work.''
       A strike is a sensitive undertaking in China. The Communist 
     Party has always portrayed itself as a workers' party, and it 
     still teaches schoolchildren how Mao Zedong launched his 
     career by organizing strikes among miners and railway 
     workers. But the government has also absorbed the lesson of 
     how strikes helped bring down Communist regimes in Eastern 
     Europe and the Soviet Union.

     

                          ____________________