Premier Zhu Rongji’s Government Work
Report delivered to the People’s Congress this year revealed acute problems
in Chinese society and economy. Although economic growth was reported to be
over 7.3% for 2001 (and such a figure is disputed by many as exaggerated), the
central government’s expenditure increased by 10.1%, financial
deficit reached a new high of RMB 309.8 billion yuan, state bond was 256
billion yuan, and the state defense budget increased by 17.6%. Criticisms were
made by delegates and specialists that a huge deficit as stimulant to the
economy will bring serious problems in the future.[1]
After a positive note on the economy, Zhu Rongji
reluctantly admitted that “there exist some problems in the economy and
social life that urgently require resolution. They are mainly: peasants’
income growth was slow; in some areas where grain was the main crop and in
areas suffering from serious natural calamities, peasant income had reduced; in
some places there was serious delay in wage payment; there were difficulties
for some factory production and workers’ livelihood; there was
more pressure of unemployment; economic structural problems were still
unresolved; ecological problems were still quite marked; regional protectionism
flourished despite prohibitions; market economic order was wanting
rectification; in some sectors or departments, formalism and bureaucratism were
serious, extravagance was acute, and some corrupt phenomena were rather marked;
in some units, unlawful appropriation of funds and non-abiding of laws were
quite general; serious accidents were frequent, and in some places law and
order was not good.”
While Zhu tried
to tune down the severity of the problems by qualifying them as happening only
in “some”
areas, there were amendments by the Congress delegates, such as deleting the
word “some”
from “some
corrupt phenomena were rather marked”, to highlight the
severity of the problems. As confirmed by Xiao Yang who made the Legal Report,
in 2001, a total of 20,120 persons were convicted of corruption or bribery, an
increase of 44.35% over the previous year.
On the question of the impact of China’s
accession to WTO, Zhu Rongji’s reply to an American journalist at a press
conference was: “the
soya beans imported to China from USA is already equivalent to China’s
total output –
15 million tons. When we wanted to adopt a policy that many countries in the
world are implementing, which is to control GM agricultural products, your
leaders from USA came to talk to us about soya beans and said this would affect
USA’s
export of 1 billion US dollars, you must be more prudent. But you announce you
will impose an added 8-30% tariff on China’s exported steel
products, which will make it impossible for China to export 350 million US
dollars’
worth of steel to USA.”[2]
Li Changping, a former township party secretary, wrote
about the burden on peasants through listing the expenditures of townships and
how peasants are expropriated to bear the burden. He estimated that the total
amount of annual expenditure for townships were: 80 billion yuan of interest
for a debt of 600 billion yuan, 80 billion yuan on salary for teachers, 50
billion yuan on books and facilities, 200 billion yuan on salary for a total of
39 million cadres at the county, township and village levels, 300 billion yuan
on expenditure of various departments and bureaus at county, township and
village levels. This in all was already 710 billion yuan. Li estimated that
peasants had to bear 70-80% of the expenditures below the county levels, which
would be about 400 billion yuan, whereas Zhu Rongji’s estimate was
a mere 50 billion yuan.[3]
Du Zaixin, the party secretary of Jianli County, Hubei
Province, under which was Li Changping’s township, said that
of the 540 million yuan of debt of townships and villages of that county, the
majority was peasants’ debt. For example, in Dumu Township, 300
peasant families each had a debt between 12,000 and 15,000 yuan.
The government has not proposed any effective means for
tackling these problems. Lu Ming, former Deputy Minister of the Ministry of
Agriculture, said at the Political Consultative Committee meeting that the
state’s
input into development of agricultural technology and science was very low; it
was 6 billion yuan in 1999, a mere 0.4% of the total agricultural output value.[4]
Urban employment has been an acute problem in the last
few years, and with China’s accession to the WTO, Chinese industries
will be facing more serious competition. Official figure of registered
unemployment in China was 3.6%, as was reported to the People’s
Congress by Zeng Peiyan. This means unemployment is at 12 million, including 5
million workers from state-owned factories that have “temporarily
stepped down from their position” and 6.8 million of registered unemployed. In
addition, there are 40 million labourers (from the rural redundant labour force
of 150 million peasants) that move to the cities to look for jobs. Wen Hui
Bao quoted from specialists that the estimated unemployment rate is well
above 10%.[5]
Some other scholars in China (such as Hu Angang) estimate that the
actual unemployment rate is around 20%.
In Liaoning Province in the northeast, once a heavy
industrial region, large numbers of factories have gone bankrupt. Half of the
labour force has gone into unemployment. Official figure last year said that
half a million people “stepped down” from their position
or had retired or left their job, which amounted to 10% in the whole country.
For workers who have “stepped down” from their position”,
which means they still have links with the factories, they are supposed to
receive a stipend of one to several hundred yuan a month.[6] However, delay in payment is prevalent.
According to a report in Beijing Evening News, statistics from factories
where there are trade unions yield the following figure: in 2000, delayed
payment or non-payment of salaries throughout the country amounted to 36.69
billion yuan. In the last two years, labour dispute court cases in Beijing have
drastically increased. It was 7,480 in 2000, an increase of 42.9% from the
previous year. In Januray to September 2001, the increase was 60% compared to
the same period in 2000.[7] Xiao Yang said that the figure for closed labour
dispute cases for 2001 in the whole country was 100,440, an increase of 33%
over the previous year.
Reports on worker protests are numerous. The following
are reports of worker actions in March 2002 alone. In Daqing, 70,000 workers
from an original workforce of 290,000 workers have “stepped down”;
starting from March 11, 50,000 stepped-down workers started a demonstration
demanding medical and retirement benefits, and the protest had lasted three
weeks. In Liaoning City, from March 11, workers began besieging the government
house and sometimes over 30,000 workers from 20 state-owned factories joined
the protest. In Heilongjiang Province, stepped-down miners from Fushun City
took to the street in mid March, and among their demands were not only payment
of salaries, resumption of the right to work, but also accusations of
bureaucrats’
corruption, cheap sale of public property, and embezzlement of funds. Around
March 11, several thousand tractor workers in Urumqi in Xinjiang Province also
took to the street and protested against sale of state property and land.
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In such massive waves of worker actions and protests, a
new sign is the formation of workers’ organizations.
According to field reports by reporters of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao,
independent workers’ organizations are in formation. Daqing
workers formed “Ad
hoc trade union committee of transferred staff of Daqing Oil Management Bureau”,
and elected worker representatives. In Liaoyang, an ad hoc organization of “All
bankrupt and unemployed workers of Liaoning Steelworks” was formed,
and Yao Fuxin and other worker representatives were elected to negotiate with
th*e government. In the name of their organization, the workers issued open
letters, and representatives elected from different factories fostered links.
They demanded that the People’s Congress endorse the clause on the “organizing
of independent trade unions” under the International Covenant of Human
Rights, so that workers have the right to form independent trade unions and
have collective bargaining power. They also demanded punishment of corrupt
officials.
The government responded by making arrests of worker
leaders in some places, and pacifying workers in others. They were particularly
vigilant against cross-provincial or cross-sectoral worker linkages.[8]
The current problems reflect the turmoil and unrest in
Chinese society after two decades of China’s reform policy of
opening up to capitalism. They are intensified by China’s accession to
the WTO. The rise of worker struggles is a collective response to the
deterioration of quality of life and acceleration of social injustice.
28 March 2002