HAN DONGFANG - BRINGING CHINA'S LABOR MOVEMENT TO LIGHT
Chinese activist Han Dongfang paints a bleak picture of working conditions in China, and spreads a message of hope and reform

by JENNIFER CHANG, editor-in-chief

A humble gathering of faculty members and visiting academics assembled in the Faculty Center on June 3, 2005 to receive a guest lecturer; he had traveled to UCLA from a great distance, and had arrived on an important date to deliver his speech.

The head of the Center for Chinese Studies, Rick Baum, introduced Han Dongfang, who took his place behind the podium with a quiet and humble dignity. For the next hour and a half, he would speak candidly about his personal struggles with bureaucracy, about the condition of laborers in China, and about imminent revolution, the repercussions of which, he asserted, would be felt by the world. His message was an important one, and he would be enlightening an audience with it appropriately a day before the anniversary of the bloody confrontation that took place in Tiananmen Square on June 3rd, 16 years ago.

As is the case with most people of extraordinary nature, Han Dongfang appears on the surface to be an ordinary man. Of average height and average build, there is nothing about his appearance that serves as an indicator of the strength of his will, the heights of his determination. All the battle scars he carries as a result of his struggles do not appear visible from the outside but, as the old adage goes, looks can be deceiving.

Han Dongfang was trained as a railway electrician in his native China, and for a good part of his life, scraped out a living doing what he was trained for. However, a typical existence quickly became a life less ordinary as the political situation in China escalated to prompt revolution. In 1989, joining the ranks of protestors who saw and desired a different future for the nation, Han Dongfang organized the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation, the first independent labor union in China in 50 years. His hope was to eventually build the federation strong enough so that it could monitor the Communist Party and its treatment of workers. It was a dangerous time to take so bold an action.

What happened at Tiananmen Square stands out as one of the most dramatic incidents in recent history. On June 3 and 4, the People's Liberation Army mobilized to confront student protesters and urban workers who had gathered in Beijing. At this time, a debate broke out between Han Dongfang, who urged a peaceful withdrawal, and others who preferred to stand their ground at the risk of bloodshed. Though those who backed Han Dongfang won out and the protestors withdrew, violence would soon follow in their wake. Though the incident is well documented and continually researched, estimates of deaths that occurred as a result of the bloody confrontation vary. The New York Times reported that 400-800 protestors lost their lives over those two days. The Chinese Red Cross holds that number to be closer to 2,600, while student protestors have maintained that over 7,000 were killed. The number of injuries has been estimated to be upwards to about 10,000.

In the midst of this concentrated crackdown effort by the government, Han Dongfang's involvement in the organization of a labor union to oppose the existing system landed him on the nation's most wanted list. Rather than resist and contribute to mounting violence, he voluntarily submitted himself to authorities. He would spend the next two years in prison, during which he would contract tuberculosis. In his jail cell, he was denied treatment for his grave illness. Foreign efforts to help Han Dongfang led to his release on humanitarian grounds in 1992. By that time, his situation had become dire. After undergoing an operation in the United States that required the removal of one of his lungs, he made a full recovery. The cost for this life-saving trip to foreign soil was great, however; Han Dongfang was refused readmission into China, and has not stepped foot in his native country ever since. He currently resides in Hong Kong.

These details about Han Dongfang's personal suffering were provided in the Center for Chinese Studies bulletin announcing the lecture. Han Dongfang himself said nothing of all this in his speech. His focus remained on the issue at hand, and he did not stray from his purpose of informing the gathering of the direness of the worker's plight in China.

He began his lecture by making clear that he was an activist, and not an academic; he openly confessed, therefore, that he felt out of his element standing before a group of university scholars. Despite his uneasiness, he would make a strong case.

"In this world, no one can escape from China," he said in the frank and plain language that would characterize his entire speech. He pointed out that we need only to check the imprinting and labels on various household and clothing items that we have in our possession to realize the sweeping influence of China on the world. Han Dongfang offered an estimate that 40% of the entire world's production currently takes place in China. Nearly all of this is with cheap labor.

He pointed out that when China's global influence is realized, often there are two thoughts that immediately spring to the mind of the average person: 1) what great power China must have and 2) what a great threat China must be.

As far as Han Dongfang is concerned, these notions are both correct. He asserts that both the actual power of China and the perceived threat of it are founded in the workers.

China's population, as everyone is well-aware, is staggering, and the large majority of the people are poor. Global economic developments have in recent decades pushed China into the position of a leading provider of cheap labor. Currently, Chinese workers labor with no pension, no healthcare, and no compensation in case of injury. The impending crisis is not immediately evident now, as laborers are still able to endure the conditions under which they work. Han Dongfang points to a time in decades to come, however, when these workers will age and require healthcare as a result of their lifetimes of hard labor and poor living conditions. A major medical crisis is inevitable without immediate steps toward reform. Though the burden will fall to the Chinese government when this occurs, the fact that the first-world nations actively and shamelessly cooperate with corrupt business leaders to exploit the cheap labor of China makes the workers' plight a global responsibility.

The problem extends outside of the urban sphere, as many rural communities are displaced yearly to make room for sprawling industrial development. More often than not, the impoverished farmers are left uncompensated, and are bereft of their livelihood. Without this, they are left with nothing.

A modest estimate puts between 400-500 million aging Chinese people in need of medical care in the near future. It is a crisis that we will all likely see manifest in our lifetimes.

As a result of this worker's exploitation, the gap between the poor and the rich is widening at an alarming rate. It is a dramatic trend that has played out in nations all over the world and throughout time. If history has taught us any lessons, one of the most important should be that this has typically not occurred without violent and devastating revolution following close behind; there is a breaking point. That China is quickly reaching it is evidenced by the growing number of workers' strikes, each thousands strong in number.
Illustrative examples were detailed by Han Dongfang in his speech - dramatic and important happenings in China that have served as indicators of and reason for the unrest that pervades Chinese society.

Han Dongfang told of one worker who, on behalf of his fellow workers, petitioned for reform with the government. His persistence led to his arrest, after which he was beaten to death. Though mournful and outraged over this loss, the worker's younger brother chose to work within the system, as futile as it seemed, to seek change for the workers and justice for his brother's death. He continued to petition on the workers' behalf, and to appeal for retribution for his brother's death. A year and a half after he began his efforts, he too was arrested and imprisoned.

To offer a more recent example of the poor condition of worker's rights in China, Han Dongfang referred to one of a string of coal mine explosions. The case he spoke of took place in Shaanxi and cost the lives of 166 miners. As tragic as the deaths were, an added dimension of tragedy is added in this instance because there were forewarnings of impending danger that were intentionally disregarded. In the week prior to the explosion, a fire had broken out in the mine resulting from the malfunction of a piece of equipment (there are no regulations to ensure that machinery is maintained in working, safe conditions). The fire had rattled the workers, many of whom refused to go back into the mine until the matter could be investigated. The managers of the mine would have none of this; in weeks prior they had been offered a $400,000 dollar incentive to boost production. Those workers who attempted to take sick leave in order to avoid descending into the mine were threatened with the loss of their jobs. In the end they lost more.

As a final illustration of discontentment being vented in the form of spontaneous violent outbreaks, Han Dongfang offered the story of the riots at a shoe factory that took place earlier this year. Workers in the Guangdong area of China who had been laboring at a shoe factory for the Taiwan-based Stella International company had seen two month’s wages withheld from them before they could stand the injustice no more. Investigations into the matter post-riot revealed that the withholding of wages for that amount of time had left the workers literally starving. Following a night of binge drinking, a group of workers from the factory were charged with enough courage and rage to begin to riot, and over the next day-and-a-half, the number of rioters who joined in the destruction and violence swelled to an astonishing 6,000. In the end, ten rioters were arrested and blamed for starting the incident. Obviously, however, the unfolding of the incident owes to a myriad of factors and unresolved issues; to pin the blame on ten individuals was a pathetic attempt by law enforcement to exhibit some semblance of control over the matter.

The signs of impending, nation-wide revolution are clear to the hundreds of millions of discontented Chinese who suffer through their back-breaking labor and daily injustices. Meanwhile, most of the world outside of China is oblivious to this global-disaster-in-the-making. The fact that these stories, as momentous as they were, were not reported on by the Western media explains in part why the American public remains largely ignorant of the threat of explosive revolution in China, and the global effects, economic and otherwise, such revolution will have. If and when China reaches its breaking point, retrospective analysis on the part of the global community will do nothing to help the situation.

As bleak and as irreparable as the situation in China seems, Han Dongfang points to recognition of the conditions that hinder reform as a means by which a crises can be successfully averted.

To illustrate, Han Dongfang describes the typical workers’ strike in China as unfolding as such: Oftentimes hordes of workers will spontaneously go on strike, bringing production and business to an unexpected standstill. They gather at government offices, demanding to present their grievances to officials; they demand that these be immediately redressed. In response, the officials demand that the matter be handled in a bureaucratic manner. They ask the workers to delegate a representative to bring negotiations to the table. The workers will then insist that they all are representatives, united under a single cause and seeking the same form of justice. As striking as this concept may seem, it does nothing to further negotiations. Eventually, such strikes conclude without resolution, but often not without violence.
In this and many similar situations, Han Dongfang fingers an obvious disconnect between the government and the common people as the culprit. The government largely views the common workers as being too uneducated and unorganized in their demands to be taken seriously. Both urban and rural workers, being well-aware of the instances in the past where the government has failed them and have met their demonstrations with unlawful arrests, beatings, and executions, have no reason to trust their government.

Meanwhile, there are many laws currently in place in China that allow for the unionizing of laborers; there are proper procedures outlined that obligate the government to deal with the issues that concern workers. However, Han Dongfang asserts that these laws have up until now only served as points of good publicity for China – to create a façade of modernity and reformation for all the world to see and use as confirmation that the Chinese government is set to join the ranks of first-world leaders. In reality, these laws have yet to be fully utilized by the public.

But herein lies the means to accomplish true reform.

The message that Han Dongfang fights to spread boils down to this: the best possible way to bring about labor reforms is for workers to go through the proper legal channels to achieve their goals. It is a message that would seem unlikely to come from a man who had yielded to the demands of the authorities 16 years ago only to be imprisoned and tortured for it. However, Han Dongfang holds true to his conviction, and with good reason.
If workers are to unionize properly and register their organization with the government in accordance with established union laws, every successful negotiation and lawsuit brought to the table thereafter would serve to improve working conditions in China while simultaneously work to restore faith in the efficacy of the laws and government. For this reason, Han Dongfang asserts, lawyers and reporters are needed above all in China.

At current, the official Bureau for Labor branch of the government points the blame for poor working conditions at corrupt managers. However, the level of corruption at which business managers operate could be effectively mitigated if the Bureau was properly regulating businesses, as it was established to do. Lawyers working on behalf of registered labor unions are needed to successfully bring corrupt managers and officials alike to justice through lawsuits. Meanwhile, legitimate reporters are needed to bring such lawsuits to the attention of the public. Under the watchful eye of the nation and of the collective global community, there can be sufficient pressure on the government for justice to be done.

Civil society, Han Dongfang points out, has never existed in China, and this is why bloody revolution often breaks out when discontent reaches dangerous levels. As unpopular as the notion may be, Han Dongfang also takes caution to note that democracy is not the solution to China’s problems – at least, not at the moment. In cases where democratic elections were set up in rural communities, most commoners sold their votes for money to buy food and other daily necessities. The basic needs of the people need to be met, and that which causes them to be discontented needs to be dealt with long before sweeping ideological changes stand a chance of being effectively enacted.

At his lecture, Han Dongfang painted the situation in China as being a veritable calm before the storm. The doomsday scenario he projected is likely to unfold within the next 5-15 years, which makes the time for action very limited indeed.

Han Dongfang currently spreads his message and encourages reform by giving lectures like the one organized by the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies and by hosting an influential talk show on “Radio Free Asia” (www.rfa.org) which can be accessed over the internet. His program reaches over 40 million listeners per week in China. He also directs the China Labour Bulletin, a prominent news source that keeps abreast of stories relating to worker struggles (www.china-labour.org.hk). For his extraordinary humanitarian efforts, Han Dongfang has been recognized and honored with many awards, including the National Endowment for Democracy’s “Democracy Award,” presented by President Bill Clinton in 1993, as well as the Gleitsman Foundation’s 2005 “International Activist Award.” As gratifying as such honors have surely been, Han Dongfang continues his fight to bring attention to and strengthen the trade union movement in China, which has yet to obtain the worldwide recognition it needs to significantly improve the conditions of workers in China and to ensure that a catastrophic revolution with global repercussions is averted.

Related Sites:
Radio Free Asia - www.rfa.org
China Labour Bulletin - www.china-labour.org.hk
UCLA Center for Chinese Studies - http://www.isop.ucla.edu/ccs/

Sources:
http://www.isop.ucla.edu/ccs/article.asp?parentid=23920
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/11/30/china.mine/index.html
http://www.china-labour.org.hk

Picture Sources:
The Associated Press
CNN.com
WashingtonPost.com