Tania Branigan in Dongguan, China.
Sunday 25 January 2009
"It happened so quickly ... There were maybe 500 involved and another 1,000 watching them. People were yelling: 'It's good to smash'," said a witness.
But the riot late last year at the Kai Da factory in Dongguan, amid the grim industrial sprawl of the Pearl River Delta, was not an isolated incident. It was one of tens of thousands of protests, many erupting from the same mixture of economic grievances, resentment of police and swirling rumour.
The numbers have been climbing steadily for years. But as the Chinese New Year dawns and the global economic crisis deepens, the government fears that mass unrest could challenge its control of the country, threatening a communist regime that has embraced capitalism with spectacular results.
Today should be the highlight of the year for migrant workers in the country's southern manufacturing hub, but the hundreds of millions who have travelled home for their annual family reunion have little to celebrate. This is the year of the ox in the Chinese zodiac; a symbol of hard work and tenacity. But no one feels bullish as exports plummet and factories shut their doors.
Officials announced this week that growth fell to 6.8% in the last quarter of 2008. Enviable as that sounds to countries in recession, it follows five years of double-digit growth and rising expectations. Just as crucially, experts believe that China needs 8% growth to provide enough jobs for new entrants to the labour force. But economists predict that the rate could fall as low as 5% this year.
It is figures like these that prompted the state-run magazine Outlook to issue a remarkably stark warning of the dangers posed by rising unemployment.
"Without doubt, now we're entering a peak period for mass incidents ... In 2009, Chinese society may face even more conflicts and clashes that will test even more the governing abilities of the party and government at all levels," said a senior Xinhua agency reporter, Huang Huo.
"The key is going to be what happens in a week or two. How many people are going to come back? And are there going to be jobs for them?" asked Geoffrey Crothall of China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based organisation defending mainland workers' rights. "The most likely thing is that it will get heated after the new year. The government pulls out all the stops beforehand to make sure people have enough money to put in the red envelopes [traditional gifts] when they go home. It puts a false gloss on the real situation."
The unrest at Kai Da began as a dispute over redundancy pay, when the company refused to renew the contracts of several workers. It led to a scuffle in which workers claim, but police deny, that laid-off staff were beaten. "How could the workers not fight back? What else could they do to defend themselves?" asked an employee rhetorically.
That spirit has pervaded a spate of recent disturbances in Dongguan: protests outside government offices by unpaid workers; clashes with police as plants shut down. "Mass incidents", as officials describe them, have been on the rise for years. According to the Ministry of Public Security, there were 10,000 across China in 1994. By 2005, that had risen to 87,000. Experts believe the numbers have increased again, not least because the government has stopped publicising them.
Even in the boom years, China felt growing pains. Its frenetic development has created pollution, social dislocation, corruption and rocketing inequality. But it's the sharp decline in industry that is really hurting now. Pressures in the export-led Pearl Delta began to build in late 2007, as the appreciating yuan and growing production costs took their toll. Recession in the west was the final blow: exports actually fell in November, for the first time in seven years.
According to officials, more than 15,500 businesses in Guangdong province shut in the first 10 months of 2008. More than half of those went under in October. Many more are teetering. Thousands packed workers home without pay months ahead of the holiday.
Officially, the urban unemployment rate has hit 4.2%. But that does not include migrant workers, who are not registered in the cities. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences puts the real level at 9.4%, and expects it to rise.
"The impact of the downturn has been huge," said Wu Qinfei...
Excerpted. Read more at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/25/china-globaleconomy/print
