Three
Chinese Workers:
Jail,
Betrayal and Fear Government Stifles Labor Movement
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post
Foreign Service
(Saturday, December 28, 2002; Page A01)
LIAOYANG, China -- On the second day of the labor protests that seized
this rusting, industrial city last March, government officials offered
to negotiate. For more than an hour, the workers debated how to respond.
Then from the cheering, chanting crowd of nearly 30,000 assembled in the
streets, a dozen men and women emerged, stepped past the riot police and
disappeared into city hall.
These "worker representatives" had accomplished something
remarkable, bringing together people from scattered factories for the
largest labor demonstrations this city's Communist leadership had ever
seen. Now, they were entering more dangerous territory, exposing
themselves as protest organizers to officials who had been trying to
identify and detain them for days.
In a second-floor conference room, the workers laid out their grievances
-- unpaid wages, missing pension funds, corrupt officials who stripped
factories of assets and shut them down. City leaders promised to address
the workers' complaints if the protests ended. The police chief pledged
no one would be arrested, according to two people who were there.
Optimistic, the workers agreed to call off the demonstrations and give
the government six days to respond. But five days later, police started
taking the workers to jail.
Yao Fuxin, one of the most outspoken workers, refused to cooperate with
authorities and remains in prison. Chen Dianfan, another representative
in the room, abandoned the workers when they turned to him for
leadership and was given a new factory job. A third worker, who asked to
be identified by only a portion of his name, Tie, escaped arrest and
continues organizing protests, but he is more careful than ever and
trusts almost no one.
What happened to Yao, Chen and Tie illustrates the difficult choices
that confront those who try to organize workers in the face of the
ruling Communist Party's determination to suppress labor activism. How
much should any person sacrifice for a cause with such a slim chance of
success? Is it right to betray your friends to feed your children? What
battles are worth going to prison for?
Their stories also help explain why a sustained, national labor movement
has not emerged in China despite mass layoffs and widespread worker
frustration caused by the country's painful transition from socialism to
capitalism.
Workers stage protests in China every day. Such acts, while risky, are
the most effective way to draw attention to their problems in a
political system in which the courts and trade unions are controlled by
the party. But these scattered outbursts of discontent are almost always
limited to workers from a single factory, and they rarely spread from
one city to another.
One reason for that is a strict policy forbidding state media from
reporting on labor unrest. But the party's systematic approach to
defusing protests by isolating and dividing labor leaders is also
critical. The authorities undermine support for the leaders by making
concessions, often minimal cash payments, to many workers. Then, they
directly target the leaders, setting them against each other by
arresting some and buying off others.
The strategy tests the strongest of relationships, forcing labor
organizers to chose between freedom and loyalty, tearing apart friends
who have lived or worked together for decades. In Liaoyang, it left two
worker leaders in prison, two on supervised bail and the others
scattered and scared, wracked by guilt, anger and mutual suspicion.
"For a while, we were united, but there's no worker solidarity
now," Tie said, shaking his head in one of a series of clandestine
interviews this year. "We don't trust each other. And we probably
shouldn't."
'We Just Wanted Food'
This drab city 350 miles northeast of Beijing looks and feels like it is
dying. Dusty roads are lined with the crumbling brick remains of failed
state enterprises, and residents say at least half of the city's factory
workers have lost their jobs.
Many recall an emotional moment on the second day of the March
demonstrations: A heavyset, 52-year-old laid-off steel worker, Yao Fuxin,
was standing on a platform in front of city hall. His arm cradled an
elderly woman, the widow of a fellow worker. Tears ran down both their
faces as Yao raised his voice and openly challenged the authorities.
"We devoted our youth to the party, but no one supports us in old
age!" he cried, according to several witnesses. "We gave our
youth to the party for nothing!" When he finished speaking, the
crowd broke into thunderous applause.
Many laid-off workers in China are disillusioned with the Communist
Party, blaming it for breaking its promise to provide lifetime
employment and benefits. But after years of petitions and lawsuits that
went nowhere, Yao and other frustrated worker leaders in Liaoyang
sometimes voiced a broader and -- to those in power -- more disturbing
complaint, attacking the one-party system and demanding greater
political rights.
With only a high school education, Yao began organizing protests in
Liaoyang as early as 1992, after losing his job at a state-owned steel
rolling mill. He was an avid listener of short-wave broadcasts such as
the Voice of America, and he supported democratic reform for China,
recalled his daughter, Yao Dan. His wife often urged him to be careful,
but he had spent five years in the countryside during Mao Zedong's
destructive Cultural Revolution, and he sometimes remarked he wasn't
afraid because of what he had already survived.
When his wife was forced into early retirement at the Liaoyang
Ferroalloy Factory, he adopted the cause of the workers there as his
own. The state-owned factory stopped paying its 6,000 employees on time
in the mid-1990s and was steadily withdrawing pension and insurance
benefits. Workers believed managers and local officials were stealing
from the plant and conspiring to shut it down for personal gain.
Yao helped the workers stage protests and write petitions to countless
offices, and he gradually emerged as one of their leaders. Police
arrested him at least twice, but he never spent more than a few weeks in
jail.
After the city declared the factory bankrupt late last year, Yao and
workers there began planning a new wave of protests, meeting in the
convenience store he had opened, or in a large conference room in the
factory. Sometimes, hundreds of workers attended. "Of course,
police noticed, but they didn't do anything. They didn't think it was
serious," recalled Tie, who was there for many of the sessions.
"But we were drawing up a comprehensive plan. We had groups in
charge of safety, of morale, of medical care. We wanted to make sure
there was no illegal behavior."
The workers regarded two other men besides Yao as their top leaders:
Yao's neighbor Xiao Yunliang and truck dispatcher Pang Qingxiang, both
longtime Ferroalloy employees in their fifties. Out of caution and fear,
the organizers drafted an emergency plan listing several other workers
who would take over if police detained those three men.
Originally, the protests were to begin March 18. But then state
television broadcast an interview with Gong Shangwu, a senior local
official. In Beijing for the annual meeting of China's national
congress, he told a reporter there was no unemployment in Liaoyang and
angered tens of thousands of laid-off workers desperate for jobs.
The Ferroalloy workers moved up the protests by a week, quickly printed
more than 400 notices and plastered them on walls in worker
neighborhoods across town. When March 11 arrived, the turnout was
greater than any of them expected.
By some estimates, nearly 30,000 workers from at least six factories
filled the streets in front of city hall. Yao and the other workers took
turns delivering speeches with bullhorns and leading the crowd in
chants. "The army of industrial workers wants to live!"
declared one banner held up by the workers. During the talks with city
officials, Yao said the workers would be satisfied if the city paid them
what they were owed and investigated their allegations of corruption,
people in the room said. But on March 17, Yao was the first to be
arrested.
Eight months later, he is still in jail. He has not been tried, and his
attorney has not been permitted to see him. Responding to a query by
U.N. human rights officials, the Chinese government said Yao has been
charged with "illegal assembly, parades and demonstrations"
and accused him of "taking advantage of worker
dissatisfaction" to carry out "destructive activities,"
including storming into city hall and wrecking a public bus.
Yao remains defiant in prison, and he has told his wife and daughter to
prepare for a long separation, according to a transcript of their
conversation during a recent visit. He instructed his family not to
accept donations from Ferroalloy workers who want to help him.
"Every country has protests. The United States is such a large,
civilized nation with rule of law, and don't they have protests? But the
Communist Party arrests me just for this," he said, according to
the transcript. "I have no regrets, no regrets. Why should I? I
didn't oppose the party. I didn't oppose socialism. We just wanted food
to eat."
Pressure Tactics
The day after police arrested Yao, tens of thousands of workers
responded by returning to the streets and demanding his release. The
next day, March 19, nearly 10,000 workers protested, witnesses recalled.
But on March 20, it was raining, and police sealed off many of the
streets leading to Democracy Road, one of the city's main thoroughfares.
Only a few thousand workers made it to city hall. On their way home,
police ambushed them and dragged away Pang, Xiao and another organizer,
Wang Zhaoming, 39.
The next day, state media said a "tiny minority of people with
ulterior motives" would be punished, while also announcing what
appeared to be a concession: The city was investigating the charges of
corruption and distributing half of the back pay owed to the Ferroalloy
workers.
The movement was at a crossroads, but the labor organizers had planned
for this. A stocky, outspoken Ferroalloy worker, Chen Dianfan, was
supposed to take the lead now that Yao, Pang and Xiao had been arrested,
workers said.
Chen, who is in his sixties, had been a pillar of the movement, an old
friend whom Yao, Pang and Xiao believed they could count on, workers and
relatives said. He had been at their side on the first days of the
protests, and he took part in the negotiations with city officials,
complaining about the problems his children were having finding jobs.
But now Chen was nowhere to be found. Hundreds of workers gathered
outside his apartment building on the afternoon of March 22, waiting for
him to come out and tell them what to do, but he never showed up,
workers said.
A Chinese scholar researching labor issues in Liaoyang met with Chen
that week and said he appeared angry about the arrests of his friends,
but also seemed frightened and extremely nervous. Chen was uncertain how
to proceed, and asked for advice, he said. Days later, hundreds of
workers staged a protest outside the gates of the Ferroalloy Factory.
Chen showed up, but he was tense and declined to address the crowd,
workers recalled.
At one point, workers were discussing the fate of Yao and the three
other detained leaders. According to one senior organizer who was
present, Chen said he believed the four would definitely be sentenced.
"I knew then that he had been paid off, that he was trying to
intimidate people for the government," the organizer said. "I
was stunned, because we had worked together for so long."
Others were not convinced. Chen had been among the most enthusiastic of
the organizers, a party member and "model worker" who felt
betrayed by the changes at Ferroalloy. In the meetings in early March,
Chen had even proposed organizing workers to lie down on the railroad
tracks in protest. Yao convinced him that was going too far, workers
said.
But as the days passed, the doubts about Chen grew. Later, workers
learned he had landed a job in the cafeteria of one of the Ferroalloy
plants that had been sold. Workers asked how he managed to find a job
when men half his age could not and other labor activists appeared to be
blacklisted. "Nobody talks to him any more," said the senior
organizer.
Reached by telephone, Chen acknowledged he had been given a job in the
cafeteria but he refused to say if police had paid him off with it.
"I can't answer your questions," he said. He said his phone
was tapped, and he was unwilling to meet in person because he was under
strict police surveillance.
Before hanging up, Chen said he still supported Yao and the other
detained workers, but said he was too scared to continue with the
protests. "The four people arrested were good friends of mine, and
we had a very good relationship," he said. "They were candid
and straightforward men, and all they wanted was welfare payments and
better treatment for our workers. They were treated unjustly.
"But you have to understand, I came under intense pressure from
above after they were arrested. I was told I would be sent to prison if
I dared do anything similar."
'We Should Still Keep Fighting'
After Chen abandoned the workers, the movement began to disintegrate.
The protests to free Yao and the others attracted fewer and fewer
people, and by April, they stopped altogether. Meanwhile, police were
making their way down a list of more than 50 worker leaders, visiting
one after another.
Fearful of arrest, unsure who to trust, the organizers split up and went
into hiding. Some quickly burned leftover protest notices, worried
police would search their apartments. "We were upset, depressed,
angry, just trying to ride out the storm," recalled Tie, a gruff,
nervous chain-smoker unable to sit still. "Through that whole time,
I didn't dare go home. Two police officers had already been there
looking for me."
Tie said he and another organizer went into hiding together, staying
with different workers every night, sleeping fitfully on couches or old
mattresses. Weeks passed before Tie decided it was safe to return home.
Police had caught several of the worker leaders by then, and witnesses
said one was beaten, but all of them were released after questioning.
Just days after Tie began sleeping in his own bed again, officers showed
up and took him into custody.
At a local police station, they interrogated him for nearly nine hours,
asking about how the protests were organized and who attended the
planning meetings. "I just kept saying I didn't know, and
eventually, they let me go," he said.
In later visits, Tie said, police took a softer approach, commenting on
his family's economic difficulties and offering money to help him out.
Tie declined the offer, but the sessions haunted him. He wondered how
other organizers would bear up. "My conscience wouldn't let me take
the money," he said. "But people are different, and they
respond to this kind of pressure in different ways."
Tie said all the organizers are more circumspect with each other now.
"I don't know if they've sold out," he said, "and they
don't know if I have."
In early May, posters appeared in Liaoyang calling for more
demonstrations to demand the release of the detained worker leaders. Tie
didn't know who put them up, but despite his brush with the police, he
decided to participate. Standing with hundreds of workers outside city
hall, a younger organizer approached him and struck up a conversation,
he recalled.
The organizer asked Tie if he knew who put up the posters. In many ways,
it was a natural question; in order to regroup, workers needed to find
out who was still willing to fight. But Tie was wary.
The worker had played a key role in the earlier demonstrations, but
there were rumors about him now. His wife died of cancer, and he was
burdened by debt from her medical bills. He also supported a teenage
son. Some workers said he was accepting money from the police and spying
for them.
Tie decided to stay away from him. Later, he appeared shaken when
describing the encounter. Asked what he would do if he was in the man's
situation, Tie hesitated, then said he wasn't sure. "I kind of
sympathize with him, but hate him as well," he said.
In late September, Tie mustered the courage to try organizing a protest
himself. He and a few friends made paste by boiling a mixture of water
and flour, then used it to put up posters in the middle of the night.
Turnout for the protest was limited, in part because the city quickly
distributed more money to the workers. But in November, when Tie and
others tried a third time, nearly 2,000 workers from different factories
took part in demonstrations timed to occur before a national Communist
Party congress in Beijing.
Many workers say Yao and the other detained organizers are heroes, and
Tie believes workers would protest in large numbers if the men were put
on trial. Perhaps in a tactic to divide the workers, police last week
released two of the leaders, Pang and Wang, on supervised bail. People
who spoke to them said they have been ordered both to stay away from
other workers and to spy on them.
Authorities may be considering more serious charges against Yao and Xiao,
because police have repeatedly asked Tie and other workers whether the
men were members of the banned China Democracy Party.
Tie is often pessimistic about the labor movement's chances, depressed
about the ease with which workers can be divided and the personal costs
of the struggle. "In China, even if you break your head against the
wall, it's no use," he said during one meeting. "All we can do
is wait for the revolution."
But recently, he argued that more people are willing to challenge the
government because conditions are getting worse. Workers stay off the
streets out of fear, not contentment, he said, and as long as that's the
case, there is the possibility of change.
"I don't think about giving up," he said. "Even if it's a
few people, we should still keep fighting."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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