“We will fight together, advance and retreat together,” concluded Qiu Zhanxuan in a video his comrades released on 4 May. Qiu was the former leader of a Marxist student association at the prestigious Peking University. He had prepared the digital testament to be released in case he disappeared.
Qiu did disappear in late April after he’d dared to call for a united front between students and workers, 30 years after the infamous Tiananmen Square crackdown. He had previously been arrested and then released in December 2018, on his way to mark Mao Zedong’s 125th birthday.
This came after students from Peking united with striking workers of the company Jasic Technology, whose attempts to form a union were blocked in July 2018. Students from Peking University and also Renmin and Tsinghua universities travelled to the south of China the following month to support the aggrieved workers.
Some were arrested, some released, and others, such as Qiu, have since disappeared.
It was the students based in Peking who began protesting in April 1989 after the sudden death of Hu Yaobang, the reform-minded former general secretary of the Communist Party of China. They called not only for political reform and democracy but also for more social freedom and equality. Progressively, workers joined the movement all across China. Initially they weren’t welcomed by the students, who feared their movement would be diluted, but soon realised that all Chinese citizens were fighting for the same cause: the realisation of the socialist ideal in the form of a more democratic and equal society.
The students’ peaceful hunger strike in Tiananmen Square ended on 3 and 4 June when, more than 200,000 troops were sent in to suppress what the communist regime saw as a counter-revolutionary riot. It’s estimated that anywhere between hundreds and thousands or protesters were killed.
Today again, the same issues are at stake, that of equality and justice in a society which hasn’t achieved the socialist dream but has instead become a fierce capitalist market. With economic growth in China stagnating and President Xi Jingping’s promise of a “China dream” becoming more distant for many of the 300m Chinese workers, student agitation could jeopardise the regime’s stability.
Fallen Proletariat
Long gone are the days of the “iron rice bowl” – the guarantee of a stable job for life with assorted social benefits. The Chinese proletariat is no more the elite of communism but the prime victim of Chinese-style capitalism and fierce globalisation. Chinese workers are in a worse situation than they were in in 1989. They have fewer state protections and the fate of many depends on their ability to accept and survive the often unregulated working conditions of the private sector.
As Han Dongfang, executive director of the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB) observed, the situation is much more complex now than it was 30 years ago. The charismatic railway worker was only 26 when, on 17 April 1989, he gave a speech at Tiananmen Square to advocate the right of Chinese workers to freely organise. He helped create the Beijing Worker’s Autonomous Federation, the People’s Republic of China’s first independent trade union. It was dismantled soon after the 4 June crackdown in 1989.
One of the most wanted Tiananmen protesters, Han turned himself in to the police and spent two years in prison. Banned from China, he continues his fight from Hong Kong where he set up CLB in 1994.
There is still a lot to struggle for. There is no right to go on strike and no right to unionise in China today – yet, some workers still protest over issues such as unpaid wages, restructuring plans, health and safety or even gender equality. The CLB recorded 1,701 strikes in 2018. Chinese workers are very active despite the risks strikes entail – from being fired, to be being arrested, imprisoned or even being made to disappear.
Disenchanted and Repressed Labour
Chinese labour law is actually well designed to protect workers, as my research has documented. Chinese-style public interest litigation as well as forms of collective negotiation – if not yet collective bargaining – have become widespread in China since legal reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s. But these laws only work if they are implemented and adjudicated independently, and the system remains unpredictable.
The past ten years have also brought massive disenchantment towards a Chinese legal system that circumvents the rule of law. Too many murky practices remain commonplace, such as forced labour known as “reform through work” (laogai or laodong gaizao) or “re-education through work” (laojiao or laodong jiaoyang). Such practices are still used by the state and some private companies alike, both in Chinese territory but in flagship foreign investment projects abroad. Reports have detailed Chinese workers dispatched overseas being forced to live in inhumane conditions, deprived of their passports, going unpaid for months.
In the past, discontent was centred among construction workers. Many migrated from the countryside to the cities without a clear residence permit, or what’s known as hukou status, making them vulnerable to possible abuses. Now, discontent is spreading.
One recent movement called “996” made headlines as Chinese tech employees named and shamed their employers about a culture of working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. This has included denunciations by workers of the powerful Alibaba-founder Jack Ma who advocates such a punishing working culture. Tech workers have also protested online about long hours via GitHub or by using memes, stickers and T-shirts.
While a lot has changed in China since 1989, much has remained the same. The state is present at every level of society, which has become extremely unequal. The leadership of the Communist Party of China remains politically unchallenged and yet, a form of civil society coexists with an authoritarian regime that represses individual democratic aspirations. In this context, some students and workers are trying to unite around the same hopes and aspirations as their predecessors in 1989 – of equality and justice.
(This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here.)
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