100 billion yuan in back wages

According to a report in the China Youth Daily, China’s migrant workers – now numbering 150 million – are collectively owed 100 billion yuan (about 12 billion US) in back wages. Nearly half of migrants surveyed have had their wages held back at some point. The article also claims that surveyed workers on average spent three times their owed wages trying to get their back wages paid. Small surprise, then, that many workers don’t try to get their wages back.

(Picture of workers in Zhengzhou holding banner announcing a news confernece calling for the return of their back wages. They had been contracted to complete office blocks on the campus of Henan University. From: Yahoo China, via CSR Asia)

Shark Attack

By Doug Henwood

Turn on the TV, and there’s always something new to fear. Not the really scary stuff, necessarily, like bombs in the subway (though the talking heads do their best to maximize those fears) but the daily sensations that are the lifeblood of cable TV: disappearing in Aruba, getting attacked by sharks—or being taken over by the Chinese.

The China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), 70 percent owned by the Chinese government, is putting in a bid for Unocal. Unocal had already agreed to being taken over by Chevron. But, as often happens when corporations start dating seriously, another suitor butted in. In this case, because China’s involved, the usual forces of nationalist fervor are up in arms.

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Hong Kong WTO Protests Planned

The Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference will be held in Hong Kong from December 13-18. Yes, there will be protests. Organizing is being coordinated by the Hong Kong People Alliance on WTO.

They recently issued a call for support from international groups, so if anyone’s interested, please contact

Jewelry Factory Workers Strike in Guangdong

5,000 workers in a Hong Kong jewelry factory in Foshan City of Guangdong Province struck for 3 days (3/15-3/17) after they began to suspect that their employer had falsified medical exam results showing that some workers had contracted silicosis.

Earlier this year, 10 workers with several years of experience at the plant, suspecting that their employers were withholding medical exam results, went to a provincial hospital specializing in occupational diseases for a second opinion. 2 of the 10 were diagnosed with silicosis, despite having been given a clean bill of health in the plant’s medical exams. These findings let 212 more workers to get second opinions, and 12 further cases were found.

Upon hearing the news, the plant’s 5,000 workers refused to return to work and surrounded the factory. The owners were rumored to have fled to Guangzhou. The work stoppage attracted the attention of the city’s Health and Labor Bureaus, and large-scale medical examinations were organized. A total of 31 workers were diagnosed with silicosis by 3/19.

The workers, who average work on the average 9 hours a day with one day off every two months, claim frequent exposure to both glass and plastic particles given off during the jewelry manufacturing process.

(still waiting for English reports, please email us if you know of any)

• 疑染塵肺症 佛山港資 爆發5000人罷工 – 苦勞網 3/19
• 首饰工疑染尘肺病入院 – 搜狐 3/19
• 广东首饰厂职工疑染尘肺病 5000工人与厂方对峙 – 今日扬州 3/19

Calling for Translators

CSG is looking for individuals to help with the translation of “Na-er” by Cao Zhenglu (in Dang Dai, 2004, No 5). Developing through a series of contradictions involving workers’ identities, memory, expropriation, contestation, etc, this story captures the processes and effects of two decades of reform on urban workers. It can be read as a critical ethnography of a contemporary working class community. “Na er,” literally meaning “there”, is a mispronunciation of “ying te na xiong nai er” (internationale) by the grandmother in the story. Through this symbolic mispronunciation, the story sems to encourage its readers to critically examine the legacy of working class positions and the meaning of proletariat in China today.

The story is becoming an event in itself. Leftist bookstore Wuyouzhixiang organized a public seminar on this story, and leading literary critics Han Yuhai and Kuang Xinian have both called attention to the significance of this story. Han Yuhai states, “If there still exists in China today a leftist literary tradition represented by Lu Xun, then the value of ‘Na-er’ is in its attempt to probe this question: what is the state and destiny of what Lu Xun called ‘the proletarian revolutionary literature’ in today’s China?” In a review titled ”’Na-er’ and the scar literature of the working class,” Wu Zhengyi and Kuang Xinian propose that this emergence of workers’ scar literature, represented by “Na-er”, marks the ending and bankdrupcy of the “New Era” associated with the “scar literature” of the 1980s.

Appearing after two decades of the reform, “Na er” is a significant event. Its significance is unfolding.

We encourage our bilingual readers to contribute some time to help translate the story so that many more of us can better understand the everyday life, struggles, and political consciousness of contemporary urban workers in China and that we can also connect this understanding with the recent case of the Zhengzhou Four (see http://www.zzpetition.org/ and the articles at this site). If you would like to help out, please visit the first section of the work and try translating a paragraph or two:

First Section of ‘Na-er’ – 2/28

You can view the entire work here