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Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
April 2001
China labor unrest
The annual and usually uneventful National Peoples Congress meeting in
March was jolted when a series of four lethal explosions ripped through the
northern textile city of Shijiazhuang. As many as 200 people were killed in
a series of detonations which blew up workers' dormitories attached to
state-owned textile factories.
Police claimed only one suspect with a personal grudge, but unofficial
reports point to the desperation among over 50,000 workers laid off
"indefinitely" as the mills were downsized or closed in the 1990s. Others
blame anger in the city over the divide between rich, corrupt Communist
Party officials and the misery of workers now living off a sliver of their
former wages.
One senior Communist Party official earlier acknowledged the growing tide
of unrest among laid off or "displaced" workers as Chinese state-capitalism
shrinks its unproductive industries, calling the clashes "non-antagonistic
contradictions." Official figures report over 18 million workers laid off
in the last three years alone, and the contradictions are far from
"non-antagonistic":
- 2,000 coal miners barricaded roads and fought police in the northern city
of Datong on March 8, to protest lay-offs and miserly severance pay they
say will not cover medical bills, since many of the workers have health
problems.
- 5,000 striking taxi drivers in Lanzhou surrounded government offices
March 13 to protest an increase of hundreds of dollars in fines, taxes and
other fees. Their demonstration was broken up after officials called in 300
riot police.
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