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The China Syndrome

By David Moberg

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… return to article

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    Unions shouldn’t be attacking Peoples China. china is a socialist state where the capitalists are not allowed to control government policy. This anti China campaign seems racist and counterproductive.  China canceled the debts owed to it by all the African countries and in China capitalists who try to bribe public officials face harsh punishments including execution.  Recently the Chinese government transfered over 45 billion dollars from it’s foreign exchange reserves to a bank that finances state owned industries, thereby saving millions of Chinese jobs.  This could not happen in many capitalist countries. The AFL-CIO should be suing Wal Mart not China. 

    United States Posted by Sean Mulligan on Apr 11, 2004 at 12:01 AM

    It is a stretch to say that China is socialist.  They are usually refered to, ecspecially by leftist academics as state capitalists.  They pay disgusting wages and a strong union movement would help them biuld up some leverage to demand better wages and benefits.  Maybe then US transnationals wouldn’t be so eager to set up their and take away american manufacturing jobs.  Sweden is socialists, China is a dispotic state run aristocracy. 

    Canada Posted by Billy on Apr 11, 2004 at 9:39 PM

    excelent very informitive

    United States Posted by al on Apr 13, 2004 at 9:58 PM

    Sean has an idealistic view of China.  So did I for the many years I studied Chinese and lived in Taiwan or the US.  Then I went to China.

    If you are left leaning, China sounds great on paper.  They have a very enlightened constitution when it comes to minority ethnic groups for example.  But if you think that describes what actually happens on the ground there, you are sadly mistaken.  Minority groups have no critical voice in China for you to hear their complaints because the media is controlled.  Similarly when it comes to workers rights, you are correct that the state there can do things like prop up a bank to save a bunch of jobs, but it is not compassion that drives such a choice, but a type of “realism” that also allows millions of people to be displaced to build a dam, with no say in the matter.  And yes, there are people who receive harsh punishments for corruption, but they are held as examples and executed publicly for a show, because there is no means for systematic enforcement, and so many people in power benefit by the corruption that they wouldn’t want to really enforce laws against it.  That’s how “some get rich first,” after all.  The ones punished as examples got on someone’s bad side or made a big mistake, or were easy to sacrifice for some reason.  What about those workers who don’t get paid?  There are sit ins in management offices and worker occupations of factories to demand pay.  These things are kept very low, under the radar, so I don’t know if the state intervenes to in support of the workers ever or not.  Given their labor law, I would doubt it, but I think that unrest over these things has reached a scale where it might hurt the government to respond too harshly.  After all, if you work for a State Owned Enterprise, the union is your boss and your boss is the state, so there is nobody for workers to appeal to for justice. 

    United States Posted by s on Apr 16, 2004 at 8:17 AM
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