Engaging

At a recent symposium on China at Columbia University--and again in a debate in Foreign Policy magazine with James Mann--scholar David Lampton argued that critics of China's human rights policies should find mild ways of engaging the Chinese government. His example of such engagement was the well-worn path of "legal reform."

A few other, more refreshing examples have cropped up. Elaine Chao, the head of the U.S. Department of Labor, unusually put forward a good idea: working with China to build a strong pension system and improve workplace safety (link). As the Change to Win delegation of trade unionists travels through China on what is the inaugural visit to the country for the Teamsters (but not SEIU, whose head has been before), other ideas are coming forward. As usual, the blog Global Labor Strategies offers good advice:

"It is not up to U.S. unions to decide what kind of labor organization China should have – that is up to Chinese workers. Some will no doubt struggle to establish independent organizations; others will “bore from within” in the official union structure. U.S. trade unionists need neither to endorse nor to shun either the official union or independent efforts. They can relate to both, supporting worker-friendly initiatives like the draft contract labor law while steadfastly maintaining the basic right of all workers to unions and leaders of their own choosing. And they can demonstrate a commitment to that principle in practice by pressuring U.S.-based corporations to offer those rights to their workers in China" (link).

This advice is good outside of labor. We don't need to limit ourselves to the kind of engagement Lampton praises--traditional human rights activism is also important. But there's no need to take engagement off the table, either.

Pet food, motorcycles, etc.

The recent food and drug scandals in China--the deadly pet food that has made cable news networks and the fake medications investigated by the NY Times--follow a horrible fake birth formula episode not too long ago.

Less tragic by far is the fake "Suzuki" motorcycle I rode in Shanxi. I was told that there are whole factories in Datong churning out machines like it.

Intellectual property rights is one thing. I still have a hard time believing that Microsoft or Hollywood are LOSING money from pirating--$150 computer programs anyone? Going once... going twice... going... If China can rip off a bit of technology from its foreign investors, too, that's a good thing---a small gift in return for an exploited labor force. Plenty of countries (including the United States) have benefited from others' inventions, besides.

I wouldn't have my old motorcyle any other way.

But these food scandals and drug scandals are different. They reveal a country unable to regulate itself in even the most basic way.

Pei Minxin's idea of China being paralyzed by rent-seeking at every level is compelling. According to Pei, the state feels it has to allow all this in order to ensure that everyone with any power is supportive and with the program. But there seems to be something else at work here, too.

There's a failure to come to grips with what kind of animal a business or corporation really is. From being condemned as parasites, these entities have been raised to the level of heroes.

And it's not just in China. I remember traveling through India and seeing stacks of books by smug American CEOs giving advice about this and that.

China IS beginning to crack down on wild businesses, it seems, dispatching Wu Yi a while ago to head up an effort against bad drugs. But as China and India and Brazil and others rise on the world stage, I hope they will articulate fresh values, not just recycle the First World's first industrial revolution.

Finally, a touch of justice

From The Guardian's Jonathan Watts:

"A Chinese court has jailed a colliery owner for life in an unprecedented move to improve safety standards in the world's deadliest coal industry.

Wang Jianjun is the first Chinese mine owner to get such a heavy sentence after he was found guilty of covering up an accident which killed 21 people..."

This Wang fellow may well be wonderful with his kids, have a good sense of humor, cook good food, etc. But he's a sociopath:

"Instead of calling the rescue services, Wang tried to cover up the accident. He cut the cables of the pit shaft, and told inspectors the mine was closed. He ordered other mine workers to stay home and sent victims' families to a neighbouring province, promising them hush money if they kept quiet. His actions delayed rescue work by 44 hours, the Xinhua news agency reported, and condemned the men to death."

The official Xinhua report on the sentence (矿难责任人首次被判无期) quotes a minister of the prison system who says that this "shows the government and Party are working hard to ensure safe production." That may well be true at the national level. But in this case, as in others, the local government colluded with the mine boss.

The minister is certainly right, though, in another of his statements: "This [sentence] sends a good signal to society."

Support the Saigon Grill Strike

Come learn more about the Saigon Grill boycott and how you can
fight for workers' rights!
Monday, April 23rd @ 8 pm
Hamilton 517
Columbia University

You've heard about the long hours, poor wages, and stolen tips,
sweatshop conditions and illegal lockouts endured by the workers of
Saigon Grill. Learn about what you can do to fight for better
working conditions and fair pay with the employees of the Saigon
Grill and the Chinese Staff & Workers' Association (CSWA).

Losheng Sanatorium

(Above: Losheng Sanatorium after the government's plans to reduce it to 41 percent of its present size--after already reducing it significantly).

Why does it matter that the Taipei government wants to wreck an old leper's asylum (or much of it) to make way for mass transit? Why has it ignited such a storm online?

I must admit, at first I couldn't quite figure out myself. I still don't entirely get it, but I now see a reason that--at least--makes sense to me:

It matters because you have to fight for what's good in what's old---right up until history moves past you.

It's like Liu Bei in the "Three Kingdoms." You can't judge entirely whether change is good. You can only use the best of your judgment in the here and now. And fight. And you just might come out on top and history will change direction.

For more on the Losheng Sanatorium, see:

EastSouthWestNorth piece

English version of activists' case

The Losheng Petition can be found here:

Petition

Graphic Work: Imaging Today's Labor Movement

April 5 to April 30
Opening Reception
Thursday, April 12
6pm to 9pm

Gallery 1199
Open M-F: 9-5
310 W 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
For more information contact Zoeann Murphy:
518.269.2233

The US labor movement has created some of the
most effective political graphics and images in
history. However, work and workers, along with the
labor movement are often depicted as experiences
of the American past: photographs of children in
factories in the early 1900s, paintings of historic
strikes and Rosie the Riveter. Now the labor
movement needs new images of the issues
confronting workers today. Graphic Work, curated
by Josh MacPhee and Zoeann Murphy is a collection
of 40 posters aimed at representing the new face of
labor.

Graphic Work is a project of the Workforce
Development Institute, the Bread & Roses Cultural
Project of 1199SEIU, and JustSeeds.org

Hope in Nepal

Arguably one of the most hopeful stories in the last couple years has been the peace process in Nepal, which has pulled off the near-impossible: justice AND peace.

A corrupt, brutal monarch has been taken down a peg (and may lose his throne entirely), a disciplined and politically savvy leftist insurgency is integrating itself into mainstream decisionmaking, a tired parliamentary system with old windbags and distant parties is getting new life and meaning, and old issues of caste and privilige---the reasons behind the insurgency---are beginning to get the attention they deserve.

Now, if only the international environment holds...

The recent shortage of funding for the camps disarming Maoists was worrying. China and India's meddling is disturbing (but potentially beneficial if redirected). And the king may still be a wild card.

Familiar...

From Egypt, we have this NY Times report on a protest by villagers threatened with eviction that is strikingly similar to stories from China:

"The Gurna standoff... illustrates the challenges facing an authoritarian government that for decades imposed its will on the people, keeping them poor but fed, underemployed but employed, but now seeks to adjust the social contract without sparking widespread unrest...."

"Political analysts say the dynamics here are similar to those all over the country as the government tries to transform a centrally controlled economy. In recent months thousands of workers in bloated state-owned factories have staged wildcat strikes, out of fear that privatization will take their jobs, or demanding pay raises."

While I appreciate that the reporter, Michael Slackman, sees in the old Egyptian system a "social contract", his article still misses something of the deeper sense of fairness that underwrit "bloated state-owned factories" in many systems, the sense of being in something together and of workers having a priviliged position in society.

This feeling will be hard to recapture, whatever efficiency gains privatization may yield.

Wen Jiabao on political reform--important?

I've been off the internet for a while, so I don't know if the foreign media have been making much of Premier Wen Jiabao's recent comments at the NPC / CPPCC meetings. Conversations with friends--who are usually given to cynicism about any and everything related to the CCP--have given me some hope that these comments have at least opened a space to which others can lay claim.

At any rate, at the risk of redundancy, here are some of my translations from the March 19 issue of "21st Century Business Herald" (Ershiyi shiji jingji baodao). The original was a paper copy, so no link I'm afraid. Direct quotations are marked by, naturally, quotation marks. All else is summary.

1. Premier Wen Jiabao, "when replying to a reporter's question, promised that the central government will push forward political reform, reduce the over-centralization of power, increase the people's oversight of government...."

2. According to Premier Wen, "socialist democracy" means "making the people be masters of their house, which requires ensuring that there be rights to democratic elections, democratic decision-making, democratic governance and democratic oversight, that is to say creating the conditions for the people to oversee and criticize their government..."

3. The paper also noted that Wen had said in November that creativity is important to any progress and that "there is a direct link between liberated thinking and creativity / innovation; liberated thinking is the cause, while innovation is the result."

Less impressively, the Premier also indulged in "online democracy" by replying to some of the "more than 100,000" questions put to him by netizens. Of course, this is a) a rather inefficient form of democracy and b) a form with little of the "cause and effect" he mentioned earlier---there is no guaranteed result to putting forward the questions, not even that Wen will read them. He can pick and choose.

These things, again, may or may not matter in and of themselves. Premier Wen Jiabao, like this whole administration, is quite media savvy. His comments on Tibet and Taiwan departed little from formula.

But Wen's words on political reform have the potential to restart a discussion that has been practically frozen in official speeches since Zhao Ziyang.

Uh, I meant intuiting the "will of the people..."

From China Digital Times:

When a reporter asked Minister Li about China's policy on Taiwan, Li answered: “All policies follow the will of the motherland and will of the people."

"Do you mean you want them to vote?" a female Taiwanese reporter asked.

Li Zhaoxing (laughing): "This question is a tricky one. The answer is No. No!"

Mines and authority

A recent piece on Shanxi coal miners in Time by Simon Elegant and Zhang Jiachang hits the nail on the head with this remark on Wen Jiabao's efforts against mine deaths:

"In a country famously assumed to be authoritarian, like China, you might think such repeated investment of personal authority by a top leader would produce rapid results."

Pei Minxin's explanation for this seeming paradox makes the most sense: authority is so dispersed and the central government is so hesitant to grab that authority back (other than in tightly military-guarded places like Tibet and Xinjiang) because there is rent seeking behavior up and down the chain of command that MUST BE SATISFIED.

Without corrupt local officials on its side, the government not only loses any presence at the village and township level, but it is faced with a potential new enemy, as Kevin O'Brien and others have shown. Local officials can bolt and go populist.

The potential for this is shown most strangely and tragically in the cases of mine bosses and small town despots who are able to rally workers to STOP the shutting down of unsafe mines.

PM Abe on Korean comfort women...

Prime Minister Abe is quoted (link) as saying: "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion" (a repudiation of his own government's apology in 1993).

Like President Reagan on the Vietnam War: "Those Americans who went to Vietnam fought for freedom, a truly noble cause" (link).

Tidying up history can deliver political dividends far down the road, clearly. But I wonder if it doesn't end up distancing people from their own countries in the end, all that white paint makes for a history that's rather hard to access. Surely pain is a part of living in a country, feeling a part of something, thinking of responsibilities.

China's chaos as "Wild West"?

The first time I remember hearing someone compare China to the "Wild West" was when I studied there (in China, not the Wild West) in 2001. An American guy--nice in many ways but with many of the more obnoxious characteristics of expats--declared happily that in the P.R.C. "you can do anything... it's like the Wild West." I was pretty angry with him--what gall, taking one's host country as a playground!

But that motif comes up again and again. And it's not really inaccurate.

Yesterday's New York Times piece on the Shanghai stock market crash began with the words "In China’s wild cowboy stock market...."

As the author, David Barboza, went on to describe how Chinese companies' stocks actually rise when their CEOs are accused of corruption, my first thoughts were that this is mayhem! Name recognition ALONE driving stock prices, even INFAMY is good! Yes, the Wild West! Then, I thought of how corruption might be seen as good by investors, y'know in a Tamany Hall sense... a historical reference again.

Indeed, it is quite easy to view China (or other parts of the developing world, for that matter) as simply being on a continuum of the Western experience. You hear it often from the tough guys who see in the P.R.C.'s labor problems "only what we went through a century ago." You hear it from neo-liberal economists and lefties alike.

But there is a big difference. China's "Wild West" is contained within a government cloak. As evidenced in today's follow-up NY Times piece, "Chinese Investors Shrug, and Shanghai Rallies", small investors in China are going back to the same stock brokers after the crash that they lost money on before. They are doing so in large part because the government "will not let anything terrible happen."

It's like a capitalist Cultural Revolution---mayhem within limits.

New Year's parade

I just attended the big New Year's parade on Mott Street (see photos above). Marching bands and corporate-sponsored floats mixed with older Chinatown mutual aid societies. It's funny how "Chinese New Year" is becoming an American holiday of sorts.

Peaceful rise

I just came across an interesting blog on "China's influence on the developing world." It's called Peaceful Rising and is run by "a historian and a cultural anthropologist."

Obama begins campaign

So, I suppose I'm one of those people who's pretty caught up in the whole Obama excitement, but I've got a good, simple reason: there's excitement.

If Obama doesn't jump through all the liberal/left's hoops and do everything the old way, that's fine. The other politicians have ditched progressives after the primaries, anyway. What he's got is a forward-looking sense of what America is about that is at the heart of what liberalism's about--and no one seems to have captured that like him in years.

(Photo courtesy of NY Times)

More on labor contract law

In These Times has a report on multinationals' opposition to China's new labor contract law. See Fights Over Chinese Labor Reform .

Three Gorges Embezzlement

BBC reports: "More than $30m has been embezzled from funds allocated for residents displaced by China's Three Gorges Dam project, state media has said." What can one possibly do about such plain, everday, devastatingly anti-social behavior?

Lan Chengzhang

I am always hoping for that turning point when Hu and Wen live up to the hopes some of us placed in them right after SARS, for that turning point when they will let us know that they've only been clamping down until the right moment arrived, that they've been waiting for some rivals to fall aside before they make their big political reformist move. That moment probably won't ever come (as just about everyone else but me has admitted).

But at least we can expect a few more moments of change like the aftermath of Sun Zhigang's death, when "detention and repatriation" was abolished. At least we can expect some tweaking of the state's coercive apparatus.

Such a moment may have come again with the journalist (or fake journalist by some accounts) Lan Chengzhang's beating death at the hands mine thugs. Hu has intervened as Wen did for a woman whose husband was owed back wages long, long ago--back when we thought the leaders might be a new wind.

The furor this time is a little too planned. Why allow discussion of the incident for so long? It's more like the death penalty debate a little while ago (which led to a policy of referring all capital cases to the Supreme People's Court) than the out-of-control Sun Zhigang case. Maybe this is being used for a long-planned change.

But what would the change be? Lan Chengzhang's death epitomizes something huge in China's new economy: corporate-official collusion. Changing this would mean actualizing the last NPC meeting's decision to relax pressure on local governments to develop, develop, develop. It would mean an end to giving capitalists a comfy seat at every big meeting, regardless of how they came to their wealth--and risk alienating them as Party supporters. And it would mean really unshackling the press.

For the best summary of coverage on Lan Chengzhang, see, as always EastSouthWestNorth's collection.