A new form of capitalism

[Microsoft Chairman Bill] Gates described China as a potential “change agent'' for the next two decades. “It's phenomenal,'' Gates said. “It's a brand new form of capitalism.'' . . . Gates's $27 billion foundation in September received approval from China's foreign-currency regulator to invest as much as $100 million in the nation's yuan shares and bonds.

The so-called Laogai is the largest system of re-education and labor camps in the world. Chinese economic policy includes in its calculations the profits made through exploiting slave workers in these camps. The prisoners have to fulfill maximum quota in order to "earn" their daily meals. They work under extremely inhumane conditions. They are maltreated and exploited in various ways. Many of the imprisoned forced laborers were sentenced without a proper trial, without a proper prosecution or a proper defense. This is particularly the case with Tibetans and Uigurs, Chinese Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, democrats and trade unionists.

The Chinese police have detained a leading human rights advocate who represented farmers in lawsuits against the government, expanding a crackdown on writers, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists who challenge the Communist Party authorities. The activist, Li Boguang, was detained by the police while visiting Fujian Province last Tuesday, his family said.

More than 1,200 workers from the Tieshu Textile Factory in the Chinese city of Suizhou peacefully blocked railroad tracks this February to protest corruption among factory managers that had cost them nearly $25 million in pay, pensions and investments. Hundreds of police broke up the demonstration, beating many and arresting six for “disturbing social order.” It’s not unusual: Employers increasingly refuse to pay workers what they’re owed—nearly $40 billion in 2002.

The rights to freedom of expression and association of workers’ representatives continue to be severely curtailed and independent trade unions remain illegal. Many involved in protests against mass lay-offs, low wages, corrupt management and other issues have been detained or imprisoned.

Each year, millions of Chinese citizens travel from impoverished inland villages to take their first industrial jobs in China's export factories. Young and mostly female, they are sent by their parents in search of wages to supplement their families' income. They join an enormous submerged caste of temporary factory workers who are stripped of civil and political rights by China's system of internal passport controls.They enter the factory system and often step into a nightmare of twelve-hour to eighteen-hour work days with no day of rest, earning meager wages that may be withheld or unpaid altogether. The factories are sweltering, dusty, and damp. Workers are fully exposed to chemical toxins and hazardous machines, and suffer sickness, disfiguration, and death at the highest rates in world history. They live in cramped cement-block dormitories, up to twenty to a room, without privacy. They face militaristic regimentation, surveillance, and physical abuse by supervisors during their long day of work and by private police forces during their short night of recuperation in the dormitories.
They can do little to relieve their misery. Their movements are controlled by the Public Security forces, who ruthlessly enforce the pass system. They are not permitted to seek better-paying jobs reserved for privileged urban residents. If they assert their rights, they are sent back to the countryside, or worse. Attempts to organize unions or to strike are met with summary detention, long-term imprisonment, and torture.

On April 29 the Bush administration rejected the petition. While refuting none of the charges made in the petition, the administration referred to it as an example of "economic isolationism." Tom Donahue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was perhaps more honest about why the petition was rejected: "Had the administration accepted the petition . . . we would have married forever human rights and trade, and that would have been a huge mistake."

Dissent
The Condition of the Working Class in China
Summer, 2004