On the 50th year anniversary of victory of China�s democratic revolution
The enslavement of workers in China

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

The current economic condition of workers in China is worsening. Neoliberal policies attendant to monopoly capitalist

State enterprises are being privatized. Industry has become export-oriented even as the state has been frantically kowtowing before foreigners to attract investments and loans.

This is one of the facets of capitalist restoration in China. Revisionists call it �socialism with Chinese characteristics�. In fact, it is a clear distortion of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. It is the impoverishment of Chinese workers and the suppression of their rights.

Conditions of enslavement

When the revisionist regime opened China to foreign investments, the Chinese workers were dealt a heavy blow.

Labor power has been kept cheap as an incentive to foreign imperialists to invest in the country. In Shanghai, China�s center of commerce, workers receive an hourly wage of only $0.90 (in the Philippines, the workers� minimum wage is $1.30/ hour), the lowest in all of Asia. This amount is woefully inadequate to enable workers to cope with the continuously rising prices of basic commodities.

The current rate of unemployment in China has reached 33%. In the cities, 15.4-16.4 million people were jobless in 1998. An estimated three to four million workers are fired yearly. About 24 million out of 150 million state employees will be jobless within the next 15 years because 300,000 state enterprises have already been in the doldrums since March. Likewise, around 300 million people in the countryside will lose their jobs due to land conversion. Thus, like desperate Filipinos, thousands of Chinese citizens have been migrating to different parts of Asia and Europe to look for work.

Meanwhile, Chinese workers who find employment suffer from such despicable working conditions and the suppression of their rights, lack benefits and receive low wages.

In 1995, 61% of all industrial employees worked for more than six days a week with more than one-third forced to work overtime without pay. Workers in many small foreign-owned factories also have no protection against the toxic chemicals they inhale.

An increasing number of workers die in the workplace. From 1991-93 alone, 60,000 died in factories due to extremely difficult working conditions, lack of protective gadgets and work-related accidents. Some factories also lock workers in allegedly to prevent them from stealing. This has resulted in the death of workers due to accidents that have occurred inside the factories, such as what happened at the Zhili Toy Factory in Shenzen, Guangdong province in 1995, where 81 workers died and 42 were injured when a fire struck the factory.

Workers are stripped of benefits such as housing, insurance and free education even before they join the workforce. This exerts further pressure on the slave wages they receive.

The government of China is currently the chief implementor of the contractual system. In Shanghai, up to 98% of all workers in state enterprises are contractual.

Strikes, the workers� foremost weapon in fighting the capitalists, are absolutely banned. The banning of strikes was written into the constitution of China as early as 1979. Independent unions are also prohibited; instead, workers� associations controlled by the capitalists and management are being organized. Authorities strictly monitor all workers� gatherings inside and outside factories. In contrast, managers have been granted more power to fire workers and dictate wages.

Distortion of socialism

Not a trace of the socialist system can be seen in the current situation of workers in China. The state enforces a policy of keeping wages low, depriving workers of benefits and maintaining difficult working conditions, using this to entice foreign investors.

Workers are made to toil for the benefit of bureaucratic corruption and to support the private sector�s drive to amass profit. They no longer have a role in organizing production because the latter is premised once more on the extraction of the surplus value created by workers and geared towards foreign markets.

This runs counter to the socialist principle that workers should work based on a centralized plan that addresses the needs of the whole society; and that workers should be organized and enjoy benefits and subsidies from the socialist state. Under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong, life-long job security was ensured by means of sound economic planning. Workers also had time for study and recreation.

China has retreated a long way. But the advances that the Chinese workers achieved in 27 years of socialist revolution have not lost their significance. They will serve as a guiding light for workers to fight the exploitation and oppression perpetrated by the new revisionist ruling class.

00 September 1999
English Edition

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