New York Times: A Mining Town's Sullen Peace Masks the Bitter Legacy of China's Labour Strategy

By ERIK ECKHOLM
April 14, 2002

YANGJIAZHANGZI, China, April 8 - This decrepit mining town was the scene of one of the largest and most violent labour protests to be reported in China in recent memory. Today, two years later, a sullen peace has settled on the two-mile strip of grimy shops and apartment houses and the 19th-century tableau of mines, smelters and slag heaps. The apparent quiet suggests how effectively the government has quelled the protests with its usual strategy - a few arrests, a ban on news reports and quick concessions to the majority of workers. The response has averted a runaway pandemic of protests. But the approach carries hidden dangers too.

The eruption was part of an escalation in labour conflicts as China's run-down state industries stumble and collapse. In the last several weeks, large protests by displaced state workers have occurred in several cities of north-eastern, central and western China, usually arising from similar charges of unpaid benefits and self-enriching officials. In each case, the authorities have responded in the same way. In the city of Liaoyang, about 140 miles east of here, for example, street protests petered out last month after four labour leaders were arrested and officials began paying overdue benefits.

As a look at Yangjiazhangzi two years after the riots shows, the government's multi pronged strategy can buy a social truce. Yet it also fosters trends that Beijing cannot relish: widespread contempt for the Communist Party, a spreading realization that protests can bring results, and continued feelings of vulnerability among millions of idle workers. The average laid-off worker here receives $19 a month as a "living allowance." Most can stay for free in their crumbling apartments, but they get little else by way of benefits.

"If you don't get sick and you don't have old folks to look after or any children in school, and if you lead the sparest life possible and don't eat very good food, that is just barely enough to get by," said a retired miner surnamed Wu. "If they keep the money coming to us, then they won't see a repeat of the riots," Mr. Wu said. "If the money stops, then the game is up."

This method of handling worker protests is potentially risky for the Communist Party. With expanded communications in the Internet era, more people realize that squeaky wheels are the first to get the grease. "The message is going out," said Anthony Saich, an expert on Chinese politics at Harvard University who studies labour unrest. "If you riot or protest, you'll get what is owed to you, and if you act legally, you'll get nothing." But the government may have little choice, he added, since harsher repression or more generous settlements would hold dangers, too. "The only real hope for the regime is to ride this out for the next several years," Mr. Saich said.

Many economists predict that employment pressures will only get worse before they ease, in part because even as millions more industrial workers are laid off, hundreds of millions of surplus farmers will be seeking non-agricultural work. In the short term at least, China's entry into the World Trade Organization may add to the problem. Still, Mr. Saich says he believes that the Communist Party can weather the disillusionment of state industrial workers, a large but aging pool, so long as it can maintain rapid economic growth ?and hope ?for their children. "Future stability will depend on what opportunities are available to the next generation coming up," he said.

Elizabeth J. Perry, a government professor at Harvard and the author of "Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China," said Beijing had been skilful at distinguishing between broad movements that cut across regions and social groups and smaller, containable economic protests. Hence the banned China Democracy Party and the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which leaders perceived as threats to their power, were crushed without mercy while local worker demonstrations are met with comparative tolerance.

National leaders have also been adept at deflecting popular anger. "The general approach has been to place blame for these local protests on local officials," Ms. Perry said, with Beijing authorities entering the fray as champions of the masses. "The establishment of unofficial labour unions, bringing together activist intellectuals with workers from disparate locations, would alter the situation greatly," she said. "But so far the authorities seem to have done a rather thorough job of preventing these challenges."

Conversations in this mining town, where a onetime population of 200,000 is declining as young people search elsewhere for opportunities, reveal the bitterness and scepticism that are engulfing tens of millions of blue-collar workers in ailing industrial regions across China. In more vibrant cities, many of the laid-off workers often find new income through peddling or other temporary work, but in more isolated communities like this one, middle-aged and older workers tend to give up.

Back in early 2000, workers here were angered not just by rampant layoffs but also by months of unpaid wages, pensions and stipends that left many desperate. Adding to their rage was evidence that mine officials were profiting as they sold off equipment from the worn-out molybdenum mines that anchored the town's existence. Tempers boiled over when a group of petitioners was beaten by the police. Some 20,000 workers and their relatives raged down the main street, damaging police cars, smashing windows and barricading the road with fire.

In Yangjiazhangzi, a company town that shows the limits of the government strategy, the riots ended in three days as droves of police officers and soldiers took up positions, and 20 "troublemakers" were arrested. Most of those arrested were released after a few months, though at least one man was only recently freed from a labour camp. As the protests died down, residents said, senior officials of Liaoning Province arrived with reassuring words and, more important, a down payment on the overdue pensions and living allowances. Since then, the workers have
been receiving their meagre benefits.

Mr. Wu considers himself lucky: he was forced to retire several years ago at the age of 50, before the mass layoffs. Since the riots, which he says he watched from the sidelines, he has been receiving the $60 a month to which he was legally entitled. Mr. Wu and his wife, salt-of-the-earth workers of the kind long glorified by the Communist Party, say they can get by on their combined pensions. What they truly dread is becoming ill. "I worked in the mine for 33 years, and now my maximum medical benefit is 11 cents a month," he said with disgust. "Hardly enough to buy a single headache pill."

A group of former mine workers and their relatives snorted scornfully when asked if they were happy with the government's response. "It doesn't matter one iota if the workers are happy or not," said a Ms. Liang, who is in her 50's. "You get your $19 every month and it's not really enough, but what good would it do to protest again? They'd just ignore us next time, or do something worse." Laid-off and retired workers here express a growing sense of unfairness, especially when they see their former managers living well and hear that Beijing has granted hefty, across-the-board raises to civil servants. One thing that keeps people like Mr. Wu and his wife from taking to the streets is the hope that their three grown children will fare better in the changing economy. Two left for a nearby city and landed jobs in a state zinc smelter that is still solvent. Another works as a bank clerk. "If the government's policies are right, our children can look forward to good jobs," Mr. Wu said. "If the policies are bad and the most damaging thing is corruption, the future will be very tough."