Global Policy Forum

By Philip P. Pan

On the second day of the labor protests that seized this rusting industrial city in 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. The workers agreed to call off the demonstrations and give the government six days to respond. But five days later, the police started taking workers to jail.

Yao Fuxin, one of the most outspoken workers, refused to cooperate with the 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. The party's systematic approach to defusing protests by isolating and dividing labor leaders is critical. The authorities undermine support for the leaders by making concessions, often minimal cash payments, to many workers. Then, they 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 in one of a series of clandestine interviews this year. "We don't trust each other. And we probably shouldn't."

This drab city 560 kilometers (350 miles) northeast of Beijing looks and feels as if 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 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 complaint, attacking the one-party system and demanding greater political rights.

Yao began organizing protests in Liaoyang as early as 1992, after losing his job at a state-owned steel rolling mill. 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 fell behind on paying its 6,000 employees 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 close it for personal gain.

Yao helped the workers stage protests and write petitions to countless offices, and he gradually emerged as one of their leaders. The 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.

The workers regarded two other men besides Yao as their top leaders: Yao's neighbor Xiao Yunliang and Pang Qingxiang, a truck dispatcher, both longtime Ferroalloy employees in their 50s.

By some estimates, nearly 30,000 workers from at least six factories filled the streets in front of city hall when the protests began. In talks with city officials, Yao said the workers would be satisfied if the city paid them what they were owed and investigated 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 UN human rights officials, Beijing said Yao had 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. The day Yao's arrest, 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, the police ambushed them and dragged away Pang, Xiao and another organizer, Wang Zhaoming, 39.

The next day, state news organizations said that 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. An 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 60s, had been a pillar of the movement, an old friend whom the other three believed they could count on, workers and relatives said. But now Chen was nowhere to be found.

Days later, hundreds of workers protested 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 a senior organizer who was present, Chen said he believed the four would be sentenced. "I knew then that he had been paid off, that he was trying to intimidate people for the government," the organizer said.

Later, workers learned that Chen 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.

After Chen abandoned the workers, the movement began to disintegrate. The protests attracted fewer and fewer people, and by April they stopped. Meanwhile, the police were making their way down a list of more than 50 worker leaders, visiting one after another.

Fearful of arrest, unsure whom to trust, the organizers split up and went into hiding. Tie said he and another organizer stayed with different workers every night, sleeping fitfully on couches or old mattresses. Weeks passed before Tie decided it was safe to return home.

In late September, Tie mustered the courage to try organizing a protest. Turnout was limited, in part because the city quickly distributed more money to the workers. 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, the police recently released Pang and Wang on supervised bail. People who spoke to them said they had been ordered both to stay away from other workers and to spy on them. Workers now are staying off the streets out of fear, Tai said, but as long as there is discontent there is the possibility of change. "I don't think about giving up," he said recently. "Even if it's a few people, we should still keep fighting."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.