Labor Contract Law having an effect

Those who dismiss the new Labor Contract Law as window-dressing by the Chinese government have some pretty concrete changes to explain.

Companies are leaving the coast for the inland or other countries. It's a fact. The departure of Korean firms has been especially dramatic. From AP:

In Qingdao alone, about 200 mostly small and medium-sized factories closed down without paying wages and taxes, said Kim Oh-ryong, deputy director of the China division at South Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy.

If you set up a Google news alert for the terms "China" and "labor" you will get a rash of dire pieces from industry publications and bloggers. See, for example, this observation from Seeking Alpha:

Many factories in the Southern part of China will be closing before Chinese New Year and not reopening. The new labor law instituted by the Chinese government is too much for many of the marginal factories to absorb.

It is important to note that many of these factory owners, while bemoaning the new Labor Contract Law, are not really reacting to provisions in the law itself, but are focusing on social security payments, wages, hours, emergency exits----stuff they were ALWAYS required to pay! In other words, the new legislation is being read not so much as legislation at all but as an omen of greater government scrutiny.

It may be that companies will calm down. But if they don't, it seems that the Chinese government is not panicking. Beijing knows it has to begin to move beyond its reliance on sweatshops into more high-tech industries---it is simply impossible to compete forever with Southeast Asia on being cheap and it makes no sense to endlessly depress domestic consumption.

China has actually raised minimum wages in many places since the law's passage ( in response to inflation first and foremost, of course). China Labour Bulletin acknowledges that the ACFTU may be starting to take its roles seriously---in Shenzhen at least. CLB has further noted recent prosecutions of company bosses. In an interview with The New Republic's website, Han Dongfang even says (not in quotes):

... the government is starting to sanction NGOs that assist workers, so long as they don't challenge the ruling party.

Doubt about implementation of the Labor Contract Law is understandable. Criticisms of the government for not doing enough are always in order. But dismissing the law as completely useless, as some have done, just doesn't match with the reality on the ground.

And it is a disservice to the many activists in China working hard to build on these new opportunities.

America now and then

I just read some essays from a collection ("Styles of Radical Will") that Susan Sontag published in 1966.  Throughout, I was struck by the difference that forty years have made.

Sontag's chronicle of a solidarity mission to North Vietnam during the war ("Trip to Hanoi") is as honest an attempt to sort out cross-cultural interactions as I've ever read, avoiding both the temptations of a know-it-all travelogue on the one hand and extreme self-consciousness and self-criticism on the other. But her musings about different modes of thinking, East vs. West, revolutionary societies vs. the United States, comes across as quaint today. 

It is incredible how much more familiar Asia now feels to Americans than when she wrote the essay and how concrete and mundane conflicts in different lands now appear---even if, unusually, those conflicts are in fact rooted in deep political convictions as, I believe, the Vietnam War was. Social science, with its numbers and comparisons, its economics and its models and "failed states", has won out, for now, over the epic, the ideologue.  

Her response to a series of questions from Partisan Review ("What's Happening in America") feels even more revealing period-wise.  Sontag blasts all of us for "the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture" and concludes that "today's America, with Ronald Reagan the new daddy of California and John Wayne chawing spareribs in the White House, is pretty much the same Yahooland that Mencken was describing." Addressing the Vietnam War, Sontag implies that violence and tackiness extend from our culture to our foreign policy.

She defends the counter-culture.  But she does so as essentially a reaction to the hopelessly corrupt mainstream---mainstream America AND the mainstream of the Old Left ("no need for dismay if the kids don't continue to pay the old dissenter-gods [Freud and Marx] obeisance").

What we want now, in 2008, is, basically, the opposite.

People long for a tradition to be a part of.  I think the popularity of the Obama celebrity music video lies in part in how it ties today's young people to "union organizers" and "abolitionists" and, of course, through its monumental feel, to Dr. King---mighty traditions, mightier than anything people can think of today.  

The same, to a lesser degree, goes for the old-fashioned silkscreen Obama posters you see sometimes, the return of Johnny Cash to center stage near his death, the craze for revolutionary green caps, boot jeans and singers channeling the IWW or Pete Seeger (the Springsteen album before last, for example). Or Wild West TV shows ("Deadwood") and movies ("3:10 to Yuma," "There Will Be Blood," "The Assassination of Jesse James," "No Country for Old Men," etc., etc.")---wild west stuff having long been a playground for progressive narratives.  

Not real populist stuff, most of this---not any more than the folksy symbols in a Ben Harper album's artwork.  

But what people want now is not to trash unthinking squares and jingoists---the targets of Sontag's ire---but to have some sort of affirmation that the Left and progress are rooted in squares, too.

Spielberg's resignation

Steven Spielberg's resignation from his role as artistic director for the 2008 Olympics is starting to make an impact on the Chinese net. Danwei and Global Voices Online have a number of translations from the brewing debate.

Predictably, nationalists have jumped on the news with acid scorn for the director. More disappointing, the cynical real politik you sometimes hear from Chinese university students has reared its head--"the West is just trying to edge China out of Sudanese oil for its own interests," "this is how big powers behave and now we are a big power," etc. Sure, the U.S. has its own record in regards to fossil fuels and violence, but for young people in other countries to be pumping that as a role model for their own leaders really drains the air out of the room. It is like the formation of an international wing of the Young Republicans.

And outright baffling--as much as one should be prepared for it--is how little sense there seems to be on the Chinese net of how NORMAL it is for activist groups to campaign on an issue, that not every organization is the mouthpiece for some foreign government (though some, of course, are part-time) and that, yes, plenty of citizens in plenty of countries demand a say in their countries' foreign policies.

But other voices have joined in, too. Danwei translates a post by Wang Xiaoyu that sarcastically praises Spielberg's collaborator, Zhang Yimou, who has not quit his position in the Games, as "China's Riefenstahl" and ends with this:

A PhD student at Renmin University who is relatively familiar with international affairs told Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao that he has frequently heard the name Darfur in the news, but he is not at all clear what the situation there has to do with China, or why people want to boycott the Beijing Olympics over this: "It's truly mystifying." This PhD student is full proof that our higher education system is completely successful. Congratulations.

Other Chinese bloggers have laid out short chronologies of the Darfur conflict for readers (see John Kennedy's translation here).

The point is that this thing is spreading. Will it change Chinese policy overnight? No. But if you really want to influence Zhongnanhai by putting pressure on it where it really feels pressure, you go to the one relationship that keeps Chinese leaders up at night: not their relationship with Sudan or even the United States, but their relationship with their own people.

When the government has to respond to the growing online discussion--and it will respond, even if the discussion ends up lopsided toward the nationalist, anti-Spielberg faction--then another entry point has been created.

An entry point for foreign interference? No, people in China will make up their own minds. But an entry point for an issue, for making it REAL to the P.R.C.

Australia returning to Asia?

New Australian PM Kevin Rudd is a welcome change. From BBC:

The last asylum seekers have left Australia's detention camp on Nauru, putting an end to the controversial "Pacific Solution" immigration policy.

Maybe Australia will now really begin to think again about what it means to be part of Asia---not in terms of meetings with the leaders of different countries and fanciful talk of some sort of grand democracy alliance (with India and Japan), but as just another country in the region.

Australia is a white settler country, like the U.S. or Canada (though arguably with a stronger indigenous movement), and it is a continent in its own right. But it is also an increasingly diverse society and is tied to the same issues affecting Indonesia, Vietnam, China...

The snow

The media routinely says a whole host of things threaten the power of China's ruling Party--the internet, religion, protesting farmers, rock and roll, the middle class (?) and the market.

But when we really, truly see the CCP shaking, it is because of failures to fulfill the routine tasks required of any state. This week's snowstorm and the government's clumsy response, which resulted in Wen Jiabao apologizing to tens of thousands of huddled workers waiting for delayed trains home, was such an instance. The failures of authorities were understandable in a way (snow like that doesn't usually fall in the southeast of China) but the country's overweighted power lines (spaced too far apart to save money) and inability to provide adequate emergency housing were serious mistakes---and were compounded by galling calls for workers to celebrate Spring Festival, the biggest holiday of the year, inside their factories. Which had closed.

The SARS epidemic and its coverup in 2003-2004 was another such instance. The recent protests against the Xiamen PX chemical plant and the Shanghai mag-lev train extension also fall in this category: the government failed in both instances to properly inform the public about its (poorly conceived) development plans. So too, in a way, do the environmental disasters that have sent people into the streets.

Does this mean that people in China are fine with authoritarianism just so long as, in a phrase borrowed from Mussolini's time but appropriate today, "it can make the trains run on time"?

I don't think this is the case, at least not any more the case for the Chinese than for any other people.

A comparison with President Bush's failure to provide timely relief to the residents of New Orleans is instructive: this failure was seen, quite rightly, as symptomatic of residents' everyday experience of racism and disregard for the poor.

Government and market incompetence on a grand scale remind people of the small indignities they have suffered at the hands of the government and market. The middle class is reminded of the red tape and paperwork and corruption and insensitive government projects that stifle their small businesses and disrupt their housing developments. Working people think of the general callousness of employers and cops.

Another argument for Obama

The Clintons are good at both gaining and maintaining power. There are other things to like about the couple (Bill’s brave refusal to trim away affirmative action comes to mind, as does, of course, Hillary’s failed attempt at national health care reform). But it is the Clintons’ power that Democrats miss most.

Hillary Clinton could probably win the general election this fall. And then after four or eight years we’d have another grand Republican resurgence. Then some mediocre Bush Sr.-style Republican. Then a centrist Democrat. And around and around.

Obama wouldn’t change everything. But I do think he has the best chance of resetting the default temperature of American politics, of keeping the left-right-left-right pendulum from not swinging back quite as hard to the right in the future, of making liberalism (yes, just liberalism, sigh, not leftism) “American” again.

I must confess to a less straightforward reason for supporting Obama, too, though. Please bear with me, as I might not explain this as exactly as I would like.

For China, America’s racism has always been a reason to discount its democracy and, as the U.S. is seen by many there as the archetypal democracy—rightly or wrongly—America’s problems are taken as an excuse for writing off the concept of democracy as a whole. An America that can move beyond its racism, not totally, clearly, but at least in a very symbolic way by electing a black president, can present a real challenge to authoritarianism.

An America that elects Obama and not Clinton II, says, moreover, that mistakes count against a politician, that the people can keep score. The Clintons’ support for the Iraq War was a major mistake, a mistake not diminished by the fact that the couple shared it with much of the U.S. political elite. China is something of a meritocracy still—bad marks on an official’s record hold him back, good marks mean a promotion—but imagine if a mistake, an unnecessary dam, say, or mine deaths that ran to the thousands in a year, or just rampant inflation really put a question mark on someone at Zhongnanhai?

Or think if being a community organizer and state senator who introduced taped police interrogations meant more to the U.S. electorate in terms of “experience” than an extra, wasted Senate term and a half?

This is silly, of course. Only a very conceited nation would think of its election in terms of the example it sets for the world. But still…

Bandung and Bali

Over half a century ago, in April 1955, Indonesia hosted the Bandung Conference or the “Asian-African Conference” (or “African-Asian Conference”). In a statement implicitly critical of both the United States and the Soviet Union, the attendees—who represented twenty-nine countries and more than half the world’s population—condemned “colonialism in all of its manifestations.”

Beyond its lofty principles, the conference is remembered for the friendship on display between two attendees in particular, China’s Zhou Enlai and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, leaders that would be divided by deepening suspicion and a border war in the years ahead.

Reports from the recently concluded Bali conference on global warming had echoes of Bandung, as when Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea spoke:

“We seek your leadership,” he said referring to the United States. “But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way.”

Or comments by Kapil Sibal the Indian Minister of Science and Technology:

"Those who want to remain on the periphery of the protocol but want to ask developing countries to bear the burden. That is against the spirit of the multilateral agreement and not acceptable.''

Or, finally, at the end of the conference:

Xie Zhenhua, China’s lead delegate at the conference, took the floor and welcomed on the United States “onto this bus.” But he quickly added: “The United States is not in the driver’s seat.”

The presence of wealthy European and North American states alongside developing world countries (“Third World” having disappeared as a potent political term and even become somewhat un-pc since Zhou and Nehru’s generation) made Bali different. The old dividing lines have clearly blurred—for better or worse.

But that sense from the old Bandung conference that something big is at stake (global warming being undeniably "big") and that differences of rich and poor matter, that we're not all in the same boat, not yet... that was there again.

[Photos courtesy of NY Times and Memo]

More on class struggle in airline seating

The New York Times agrees with me about the brutal class system aboard airplanes:

It’s that insubstantial curtain that is drawn after we reach altitude, the one that pretends to protect decadent first-class activities — it cannot be lap-dancing, orgies or the tango — from the purportedly covetous eyes of the rest of us. What that curtain really does, its sole purpose, believe me, is to keep us from using the toilet up there.

...and...

To be blunt, I now hate those people in first class and whatever system deposits them there. Hi, Karl Marx, did you say class system? Sometimes, I imagine myself as Pirate Jenny in “The Threepenny Opera”: kill them now, or later?

In truth, when the revolution comes in an airline cabin, it will be a petit bourgeois revolution. The organization World Development Movement, in making an argument for a tax on aviation to pay for poverty relief, notes:

Flying is an activity dominated primarily by the rich. The richest 18 per cent of the UK population are responsible for 54 per cent of flights, whilst the poorest 18 per cent are responsible for just 5 per cent. The average salary of passengers at UK airports is £48,000.

So, when the first class sections are dismantled and distributed evenly, cushion by cushion, martini by martini, personal DVD player by personal DVD player, it will only be one step on the way. It will be the Sun Yatsen to the Mao Zedong!

Collective bargaining under new law

One little wrinkle in China’s new Labor Contract Law:

Whereas in the past workers could engage in collective bargaining through their own chosen representatives if there was no ACFTU branch in their workplace (according to the Labor Law and Regulations on Collective Contracts), they may now (only?) do so “under the guidance of the next-higher level union.” China Labour Bulletin has more details in its new report available here.

Of course, in practice the ACFTU has always tended to intervene anyway. So, is this really a step backward? Or something positive that will push the ACFTU to engage in more collective bargaining? We’ll have to see how it’s implemented…

Also, there's more great coverage from Global Labor Strategies and Beijing Newspeak on the law.

The U.S. on Pakistan = India and China on Burma

General Musharraf has tear-gassed, beaten and arrested his country's ordinary citizens and civil society. The Supreme Court has been replaced. Opposition party leaders have been silenced (though Bhutto has been left alone and may, finally--just maybe--taking a real stand that puts her outside her carefully managed strategies within strategies). Needless to say, labor activists have not been spared.

Khalid Mahmood of the Labour Education Foundation was arrested (and later released), as was Nisar Shah of the Labour Party. Other arrests included the convener of the Pearl Continental Hotel Workers Solidarity Committee, Liaqat Ali Sahi, and two members of the Solidarity Committee, G. Fareed Awan, Assistant General Secretary of the All-Pakistan Trade Unions Federation (APTUF) and Ayub Qureshi, Information Secretary of the Pakistan Trade Union Federation (PTUF) (see the IUF report). Activists belonging to the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum narrowly escaped arrest in Karachi; workers helped them evade police. Mohammad Ashiq Bhutta, Information Secretary of the National Federation of Food, Beverages and Tobacco Workers, was arrested and later released.

And this is for the war on terror? As Asma Jangahir of the Pakistan Commission for Human Rights stated: "Those he has arrested are progressive, secular minded people while the terrorists are offered negotiations and ceasefires."

More specifically, if Musharraf returns with a coalition of religious parties to hold him in power after all this, it will certainly seem like a cruel joke.

Pakistanis have struggled for decades for real democracy and social justice, through divisions and dictators. And they have voted for religious extremists in lower percentages than Americans have.

Now, an incredible consensus seems to be forming between workers and landless farmers and their advocates, liberals in the form of lawyers and human rights organizations, stodgy party activists, and thousands of citizens who don't fit any specific category. The idea of a Pakistan that trusts itself, that will make its courts matter, that wants to begin again without the military, or without such a domineering military, is taking hold.

Or it is trying to take hold, amid all the confusion and bitterness of what is essentially martial law.

And yet, the U.S. is worried--not so much about the broken skulls and packed prisons, but about that very energy I just described. From The New York Times:

Among Western diplomats, there is rising concern that General Musharraf’s declaration is also damaging the standing of the Pakistani Army as an institution, which has long been seen as the force holding the country together.

“It’s the concern about how the military retains its position as an institution of national respect,” said a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “These kinds of things can be damaging to the institution, the respect for the institution and also the morale.”

The "standing of the Pakistani Army"... we're crying for THEM at a time like this?

This is not because American politicians (or "Western diplomats" generally) are so reactionary that the idea of people power makes them scurry into dark places and plot to stab the masses in the back. It's just that they have no sense of how to even talk to the Pakistan people if they had to. Sure, everyone wants democracy, but the military is an old buddy and we just, y'know, feel comfortable around it.

It's a little like the good ol' boy diplomacy of the U.S. in Central America during the Cold War. I'm sure some in the State Department or CIA genuinely wanted fair elections in El Salvador. But if the elections had to be held amid massacres and intimidation, well, at least we could keep our dinners with the elite down there.

And, when things settled down, bones of El Mozote and those murdered nuns largely forgotten, and the rebels too worn out to keep up their dreams, we could teach the "Salvador Option" to young commanders in Iraq.

I'm not saying dash it all to hell. Sure, keep your ties with generals if need be. But for heaven's sakes don't make it be about them. Make it be about the country.

Right now, U.S. rhetoric is sounding a lot closer to China and India's statements on Burma than anything else.

Chinese diaspora photographers at Q Art Space

For those in New York City, there's a great photography show going on at Q Art Space entitled "Intimate Distance." From the its press release:

...a photography exhibition featuring nearly fifty photographs by nine photographers of the Chinese diaspora in the United States. Young, well-traveled, globally-minded, confident and eloquent… these photographers are distinct from artists of the Social Realism, Kitsch and Pop generations.

The exhibit is up from November 8-17. For more information, visit the site: Q Art Space.

Coal deaths down by 50 percent? No.

From China's State Administration of Work and Safety:

Deaths in China's coal mines, the scene of some of the worst industrial carnage, fell from 4.94 per million tons of coal mined in 2002, before the safety law was adopted, to 2.04 last year.

...which begs the question: how much did the production of coal go up between 2002 and last year? The number of deaths in total has not fallen a whole lot.

Hong Kong gangsters and doing what's right

What is so attractive about Hong Kong gangster movies? Obviously, the tough guy stuff has its attractions--and the ballet-like battles in John Woo and Johnny To movies are incredible. But what sets these stories apart from action flicks is the acknowledgment of choices.

Having a criminal at the center of a film forces a certain degree of reflection. If he is to seem at all accessible to viewers, he (and the character is almost always a he) has to acknowledge the pain he causes others by his actions. And if we are to go a step further and actually admire him, the criminal must call on a host of rather old values, values familiar to us from fairy tales, old books with brutal, awkward senses of morality, and our own lives--loyalty, family, honor, redemption.

In crime stories generally, but Hong Kong ones in particular, death takes on a gravity that is almost altogether absent from your typical Hollywood blockbuster.

I've sometimes come out of summer shoot-em-ups--even the ironic stuff of Tarantino and Rodriguez--with a nagging sickness in my stomache. I don't mean to seem holier-than-thou, but I've often felt guilty watching "bad guys" shot down by the dozens without a moment to think about the violence that has just occured. Was that evil henchman really evil?

Chow Yun Fat's characters aren't so certain they are right. In fact, they usually know they are wrong and are searching for some decency to pull them out of the rut they're in--a woman to save, an estranged brother who's a cop, a friend trying to go clean, etc. They play songs on the saxaphone for each of their victims ("The Killer") or make paper cranes for the dead ("Hard Boiled"). And they have hang-dog, worn looks on their faces.

Sometimes, I think American politics could do with a touch of the tragic, a touch of Chow Yun Fat.

A history professor when I was an undergraduate mused that Europeans approach rulers with a history of hundreds of years of lousy kings in mind and therefore have less of a need to airbrush history. The same might be said for China.

America's idealism and simple storylines have sometimes been just what the world is craving. But not now. What is needed is an America that can feel the weight of an awful mistake, of the need to atone, that will not just write off every horror as a "learning experience." It needs to see itself more as a sinner trying to make things right.

Such an America wouldn't allow its president to blanket waterboarding with the lie "America doesn't torture." And such an America would understand the world a bit better.

Reform on the front page

One of China’s most daring papers and the country’s boring, English-language propaganda sheet agree: the People’s Republic will finally begin to open its government.

Or, as Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily) says in its headline, “Expand People’s Democracy, Build Ecological Civilization.” Or as China Daily meanwhile reports, “Political reform ‘will be pursued.’”

Neither explains what any of this means, which is understandable, as we don’t have much to go on but Hu Jintao’s report at the opening of the 17th Party Congress, which was heavy on carefully chosen phrases and a bit sparse on details.

And both papers could have different reasons for the same conclusion.

Nanfang Dushi Bao may be continuing a proud tradition of taking leaders at their words when those words are welcome and then trumpeting those words as loudly as possible in the hope that maybe, just maybe those words—and not other official pronouncements—will come true (O'Brien and Li have called this "rightful resistance" in other contexts). China Daily might just be trying to make foreigners like me happy.

Two, Three, Many Burmas

With the protests in Burma slowed--perhaps only temporarily--I thought I'd post a few updates on the situation:

I wrote earlier wondering what the protests would mean for China. A visit to Boxun's international news page shows Burma, Burma and Burma (and yes, people in China do read Boxun). John Kennedy has a nice translation in Global Voices of Chinese blog posts in support of the protesters. There are plenty of Chinese e-mail calls to action floating around, some of which I've received.

H.H. the Dalai Lama came out in support of the monks early on in clear terms. Archbishop Desmond Tutu just spoke out forcefully, too, linking the repression to the Beijing Games. There were big protests in Japan (who lost a reporter to the repression) and, of course, the Southeast Asian nations neighboring Burma.

The Burmese protests are casting an even wider net, though. Pakistan's civil society was dealt another beating--and tear gassing--the other day when lawyers, political activists (such as Fariq Tarooq, head of the Labor Party of Pakistan) and journalists were brutally attacked by riot police right outside the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Writing in The News, Ayesha Tammy Haq has the following to say:

There are two countries in this world ruled by military dictators, Pakistan and Myanmar, formerly Burma. Both have seen peaceful protests turn violent and currently both are in the news with a new series of protests and resultant police brutality. In Myanmar the monks are out in their orange and rust robes while Pakistan is a sea of black coats. Fortunately for Myanmar, it has in Aung San Suu Kyi a political leader in residence with commitment and vision. We in Pakistan are not as fortunate. Our political leaders, tainted by scandals involving financial malfeasance and stories of power-sharing deals with the very people who carry out these and other excesses, lack moral authority.

Sadly, Haq adds:

While the western powers are willing to condemn the brutality in Myanmar they are not so quick to do so in Pakistan. Burma's military junta is not a part in the so-called war against terror and Al Qaeda is not growing like a fungus in the Shan Mountains.

We can and should demand that Bush act in a more even-handed manner. Certainly, when Israeli troops recently opened fire at a crowd of Palestinians waiting at the Erez crossing in Gaza, wounding a fourteen year old, Bush could have said something. He might also have spoken out about Egypt's recent roundups of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Or come out strongly about the Philippines' grisly record of 33 murdered trade unionists last year.

But the obvious hollowness of the Burmese leaders' recent claim--that criticism of them amounts to neo-colonialism--only serves to emphasize that events in Burma have moved beyond Bush and the support-counter-reaction-support that he inspires. The situation is bigger than him. And it may even be the case in Rangoon, in this one instance, that he can't mess things up.

There might be a wonderful solidarity in the works.

Benedict Anderson describes how novels gave eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century people a sense of nation, the idea of several characters, several lives being lived across a "single" culture in any given instant.

Reading about the beginning of the twentieth century I've often been struck by how people then seem to have felt that they were living something else, even bigger than the nations written of by Anderson, how they identified with struggles in Italy, Russia, Spain, China, etc. The enduring image in my mind (from, admittedly, the novel "Ragtime") is of U.S. workers packing a union hall to raise money for Mexican revolutionaries.

That's all nostalgia on my part--and nostalgia for something before my time, to boot!--but the sympathy that these Burmese protests have ignited abroad is real. I hope it shows the way to a truer movement for democracy--and social justice, too--than has been possible these past nigh-on-eight years.

China and Burma and change

The protests in Burma have reached a critical phase in which the brittle hope of marching monks and ordinary citizens is meeting the Burmese military regime’s first acts of violence. With the United Nations holding its annual summit in New York, attention has naturally focused on the country’s closest friends: India, Russia and China. Sadly, India and Russia have so far been spared the brunt of the world’s indignation, but the pressure that China has received is nonetheless deserved.

The PRC’s ties with Burma go back long before “reform and opening,” despite Burma’s dogged anti-communism (although ties between the countries were strained during the Cultural Revolution, when ethnic Chinese radicals spooked Burmese authorities). As is often noted, China has extensive energy interests in the country (as have Western companies like Unocal). A need to stem the flow of drugs from south of its borders has also drawn Beijing into Burmese politics. So too has the occasional need to burnish China's credentials as a neutral power, saintly uninterested in others' internal affairs.

Editorials, political speeches and protests have demanded a Chinese response to repression of the protests. Only China has any sway in Rangoon! C'mon China, say something!

And China is responding, in its own meandering way. There was China’s rejection of sanctions against Burma today, of course, but also words by Chinese officials regarding “stability” and “reconciliation” and Burma’s need to find its own path to democracy—frustratingly vague words, but hardly supportive of the junta. Why?

There seems to be an impression among some journalists that Beijing is a member of some great, criminal brotherhood of authoritarian states, something like the “Sinister Six” of Spiderman lore or the cackling band of villains in the 1960s Batman TV series. Any threat to any authoritarian state anywhere is viewed as a threat to the Chinese Communist Party, regardless of the context. The story goes something like this: “China, facing human rights issues at home, would surely not want this or that to happen to such and such awful government…”

In truth, China seems as fine with authoritarian North Korea as it is with liberal South Korea, with a clamped-down, nationalistic Russia as it is with a sleepily generous EU, and, increasingly at least, as comfortable with a Pakistan under occasional military rule as a steadfastly, if unevenly, democratic India. And it goes without saying that ideology in its "left" and "right" sense plays little role in Beijing's calculations.

Reasons for China's support for Burma and for any pressure it has put on the junta--or will put on it--must be found elsewhere.

Isabel Hinton has a great piece in The Guardian entitled “China Does Not Want Another Tiananmen By Proxy” whose title makes a pretty forceful argument by itself.

David Lague writes in the International Herald Tribune about how Beijing has quietly made ties with the Burmese opposition:

…there is evidence that China has been hedging its bets on political developments in Myanmar for some years.
Lintner, the Thailand-based analyst, said Beijing maintained unofficial contacts with exiled Myanmar opposition groups in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries in a bid to minimize their antagonism and to improve its understanding of political developments.

He said Beijing also tolerated the presence of these groups in Ruili, on the border with Myanmar in Yunnan Province, where some maintain unofficial offices.

Naturally, there is also the question of whether China can do anything at all, whether anyone--China, India, Russia, the UN, ASEAN, anyone--has any real influence in Rangoon (see, for example, the rather dry, know-it-all, “let’s hear from a seasoned expat” argument in Foreign Policy).

Another question, though, not touched on much (other than in the caricatured, Sinister Six form) is what exactly the fall of the Burmese junta would mean for China or for other authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes in the region, such as Vietnam, Cambodia or Thailand. What would it mean for Tibet?

Beyond wild hopes of revolution in these places--which it will sadly probably take more than a Burmese uprising to stir--what will it really mean for the spirit of people? The images we see of monks walking through the rain, having their feet bandaged by supportive city residents, and being beaten by soldiers strike a chord of pure sympathy that seems to have been buried, quite wrongly, with the perceived mush of the post-Cold War era (as if the Cold War wasn't a mush, too, a more horrible one).

No doubt there are complexities to Burma's own politics that someone like me, who doesn't really know more than what the papers have reported, could benefit from understanding. But as a symbol for the rest of the world, what is happening there now is powerful. We'll see what it means for China to engage with another country at a moment like this---for whatever reason China engages and with whatever effect it ends up having.

But in the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to hope.

Mines

The outrage that has been directed at Chinese mine bosses and authorities in Shandong is incredible to watch (see the BBC video on Youtube). But it is even more incredible when contrasted with the bewilderment of people in Huntington, Utah, who seem unsure whether to buy the words of Crandall Canyon mine co-owner Bob Murray or the United Mine Workers---and seem, understandably, just weary above all else.

Time and again, there seems to be LESS tolerance for elites misbehaving in China than there is in the U.S. This is, of course, not what one would expect of an authoritarian country where, it is assumed by outsiders, the government exists only because people never do anything about it and are scared as lambs.

Maybe it's the incredible power of American spin to place seeds of doubt in even the most commonsense reaction to events that makes us tired and confused. The U.S. media is cowed by press secretaries and dithers over torture or wire taps or unsafe mines--"Was something wrong REALLY done? Or do we just not understand the complexity of the issue?"

Or perhaps the boldness with which China's revolutionaries once pledged themselves to "serve the people" still resonates back over the ages, casting into sharp relief today's dull, selfish bureaucrats and spurring Chinese to rally against polluting factories, refuse to leave condemned homes to make way for shopping centers, fight with thugs for fields, and smash every piece of glass in the mine company's office.

Or maybe there is simply a stronger tradition of challenging authority---really spitting on it and dragging it through the streets--- in China than in the States, absurd as this may sound to some. And the Chinese government is lucky to have stayed on top of the wave as long as it has.

At any rate, the facts are there, brutal in both countries, in both mines.

No word yet on 181 miners in China who were trapped in a flooded mine several days ago; the government's most recent statement suggests they were victims of a "natural distaster." Meanwhile, Boss Murray is about to give up on recovering the miners in Utah or even their bodies. Documents obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune show the risks that his mine took before the tragedy:

Records of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) show that, after Murray acquired a 50 percent ownership in the mine on Aug. 9, 2006, his company repeatedly petitioned the agency to allow coal to be extracted from the north and south barriers - thick walls of coal that run on both sides of the main tunnels and help hold up the mine.

That stands in stark contrast to statements Murray made Monday asserting that his company's mine plan, and that of the previous owner, were one and the same.

So, what should we do?

[The above photos are from China Digital Times and Fox News].

Toys

New York-based China Labor Watch (CLW) has hit toy companies hard with a new report on factories in the Pearl River Delta. With attention on Chinese product safety, the report landed on CNN, Reuters, The New York Times, and Bloomberg.

Reforms---market and otherwise

Like my mixed feelings about the Clinton wing of the Democrats at home (Mr. or Mrs. Clinton), I never know quite what to make of the market reformists in China, a country where the distinction between "liberal" and "left" is as clear as day and night.

Hu Shuli has a piece in Caijing magazine, in which he complains, in typical market reformist fashion, that people who think China has become too imbalanced or worry about further marketization leading to social instability are missing the forest for the trees.

He dismisses those who "suggest solving all our social problems once and for all, simply by expanding China’s social welfare system," but then hedges by saying that "current projects that should continue include efforts to establish a strong social-security system."

Then he slips in a little gamble:

Current efforts to deepen reforms of the economic system face many challenges. Therefore, it is high time that we continued on political system reform actively and safely. The core goal for political-system reform is to accelerate democratic change and establish a modern, socialist country with democracy and a full-fledged legal system.

Efforts to reform the political system and other arenas should proceed shoulder-to-shoulder.

A friend of mine said that China will definitely begin democratic reforms before too long; the only question is who will come out on top: liberals or the left. His words had an ominous ring to it, a little like Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads in Iraq gearing up for the show-down that will come when America leaves.

But, really, where should workers and farmers stand? How much should they cooperate with market reformers who, like Hu Shuli, also advocate a common goal, political reform?

There isn't a ton of history to rely on here. The United Front---during the revolution and immediate post-revolution years---managed to draw on a range of energies for reconstruction, but didn't give liberals much of a real voice. The liberal Tiananmen students, on the other hand, didn't give farmers and workers an equal stage.

And Clinton II isn't likely to give labor any important seat at the table.

The Labor Contract Law and lay-offs

As the implementation of the recently-passed Labor Contract Law nears, companies are firing older workers before management is forced to take on workers who have worked for at least 10 years continuously (or have signed fixed-term contracts twice) as permanent employees.

A July 15 issue of the Guangdong paper "Yangcheng Evening News" has a report by Wang Xiaoyun entitled "'The Labor Contract Law' Made Me Lose My Bowl of Food." It tells the story of 50 year old worker Hua Yi, who was employed at a plant since 1996---until recently, when she was told there wasn't enough work for her. New workers, though, were hired in Hua's place.

Another worker, A Yu, put in 21 years at a factory only to be informed that her work was unsatisfactory and fired. She was left to rely on her husband's 600 RMB per month salary to take care of aging parents and a daughter not yet four years old.

If enterprises' worries are a sign that the law may be better enforced than previous regulations, then these firings, while painful, should give some bitter hope to the Pearl River Delta's proletariat.

But managers and workers both know that much depends on how the national law is translated into local law, that things are still in flux. We can only wait until the beginning of 2008. But the wait will be rough.