Signalfire

BEIJING — Teams of police armed with guns and batons patrolled streets in the western region of Xinjiang on Sunday, part of stringent security precautions put in place ahead of the one-year anniversary of China’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

Though visitors were able to travel freely in the traditionally Muslim region, their bags were checked at airports, train stations and bus stops, as well as government offices, said a receptionist surnamed Fang at the Yilong Hotel in the regional capital of Urumqi.

SWAT teams were patrolling the streets in groups of about 10, she said, some of them armed.

Long-standing tensions between Xinjiang’s minority Uighurs and majority Han Chinese migrants flared into open violence in Urumqi one year ago. The government said 197 people were killed in the violence, triggered by the deaths of Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) factory workers the country’s south.

After the July 5 bloodshed, the government suspended the region’s Internet, international telephone and text messaging links to the outside world for more than half a year. Beijing — which accused overseas Uighur groups of plotting the violence, something exile groups deny — arrested hundreds of people and sentenced about two dozen to death in the aftermath.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, said Uighurs who fled China after the unrest reported excessive use of force, mass arrests, enforced disappearances and ill treatment in detention.

“Instead of stifling inquiry, blaming outside agitators and generating fear, the Chinese government should use the anniversary to launch a proper investigation, including into the Uighur community’s long-simmering grievances that contributed to the unrest,” Catherine Baber, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific deputy director, said in a statement.

China’s leaders say all ethnic groups are treated equally and point to the billions of dollars in investment that has modernized Xinjiang, a strategically vital region with significant oil and gas deposits.

But authorities have been accused of alienating the Uighurs, Turkic Muslims who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Han majority, with tight restrictions on cultural and religious expression and nonviolent dissent.

Many Uighurs say they suffer discrimination in jobs and cannot get loans and passports.

Xinjiang’s public security bureau said in a statement Sunday that residents were going about their business as usual, following campaigns to seize illegal weapons and explosives and increased security in areas with higher rates of crime. It did not give details.

A government-run website, xjpeace.cn, said all vacations for Urumqi police officers were canceled from June 20 to July 20. It said the police department had launched an “all-out” campaign for 30 days to crack down on “all kinds of criminal activities and firmly prevent violence.”

The department also dispatched 1,000 extra officers to local police stations to help patrol the city, it said.

“We have confidence and we totally have the ability to maintain stability in Xinjiang,” Maj. Gen. Qi Baowen, chief of the Xinjiang paramilitary police, was quoted as saying by the China News Agency.

Paramilitary troops flooded the region and restored order following the violence, and their key task now is to “help build a harmonious Xinjiang,” Qi said.

A spectre of labour unrest is haunting the country – and it terrifies the ruling Communist party

Zhang Liwen found out that she was about to go on strike over a breakfast of steamed buns and congee rice porridge at her factory dormitory. Fifteen minutes later, she was taking part in industrial action for the first time in her life.

“I was worried, but everyone was excited and determined,” recalls the 21-year-old migrant worker at the Denso car parts plant in China’s southern province of Guangdong. “We started our shift at the normal time, but instead of working we just walked around and around the workshop for eight hours. The managers asked us to return to our jobs, but nobody did.”

The next day she and the rest of the 1,000-strong workforce repeated the demonstration at the Japanese-owned factory, which makes parts for Toyota and Honda. This time, the corporate union begged them to go back to work. Again they refused.

There was no chanting, no speeches, no violence. When the workers got tired, they sat down and chatted for a few minutes. Then they got up and carried on walking until the end of the shift, marked their time cards and went home.

Industrial action does not get much lower key than this, nor does it get much more significant. The Denso strike was reported across the world because it took place on the frontline between global labour and global capital: workers in the workshop of the world had downed tools – and won.

For almost three decades, the world’s biggest corporations have outsourced an increasing share of their manufacturing operations to China, where they can benefit from cheap labour and lax regulation. In rich nations this has helped to keep consumer prices low and corporate profits high. In China it has meant workers having to endure a worsening environment, tough conditions and wage rises that have failed to keep pace with economic growth.

But Zhang (not her real name) was part of a recent wave of strikes to have hit foreign companies, prompting speculation of a readjustment. In the past two months workers have walked off production lines at three Honda plants, a Toyota supplier, a Hyundai factory in Beijing, a Taiwanese rubber products manufacturer in Shanghai and a Carlsberg brewery in Chongqing. The latest action, last week, was at a Japanese electronics firm, Tianjin Mitsumi, where workers crippled output with a sit-in, complaining they were being asked to work extra hours for no extra pay.

In almost every case the strikers have won at least a partial victory. Zhang and her colleagues at Denso went back to work last week after their Japanese bosses promised a rise in the monthly basic salary from 1,300 yuan (£125) to 1,700 yuan. In addition, they will get a bonus increase of 400 yuan per month.

Such successes have created a new cast of heroes for the global labour movement. Business analysts are warning that consumer prices might rise if the era of cheap Chinese goods is over.

The ruling Communist party – which has long since cast aside its revolutionary Marxist origins – faces a conundrum. Not wanting to stir up a Solidarity-like opposition, the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, has publicly called for improved working conditions. The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist party, has hailed a “tipping point” of relations between labour and capital. There are hopes that a newly aspirational class of migrant workers might drive the economy away from cheap labour and production, so that China could finally leave behind its reliance on low-cost, high-polluting manufacturing.

Yet, off-stage, the authorities are terrified of instability and a fall in foreign investment. The governor of Guangdong has been called in to brief the politburo. Domestic reporters have been ordered to play down their coverage of the strikes to minimise the risk of copycat actions.

Perhaps for this reason, the workers who have won pay rises in Guangdong are far from triumphant about their success. There is none of the assertive militancy that was seen at the Yorkshire collieries in the 1970s or the Gdansk shipyards in the 1980s. Nervous of repercussions and suspicious of potential management spies, many workers play down their actions. “We don’t call it a strike. We just say we stopped work,” said Zhang.

“Nobody tells us who is leading the strike, because if everyone knew then the management might find out and punish them,” said another 22-year-old migrant worker. “Nobody told us there was going to be a strike until it happened.”

Off the record, workers said there had been a secret meeting the day before the strike started on 21 June. Rather than leave a digital record that could be traced back to their computers or mobile phones, the organisers handed out leaflets stating their demands to the management: an 800-yuan pay rise, the right to choose their own union representatives and a guarantee that nobody would be punished for striking.

On the day of the strike, the organisers were so cautious about revealing themselves that the frustrated management encouraged the official union to organise a vote for representatives so that they had someone to negotiate with. It was not so much a Solidarity moment as a stealth movement.

The Pearl River delta contains one of the world’s densest clusters of industrial estates. Many factories sit amid palm trees and vegetable fields ringed by broad roads and power lines. Workers’ dormitories sit close by, easily identified by the workers’ uniforms on the washing lines and the many pairs of trainers left to air by the windows.

The new communities are almost identical. The city of Foshan’s “Car Assembly Town” is typical: a few broad low-rise factories, a thicket of six-storey dormitories, an internet cafe, a mobile phone shop, a bank and a small street of food kiosks selling noodles, fried rice, boiled eggs and spicy stew. Off-duty workers with dyed hair, jeans and trainers wander out from their new dormitory, carrying umbrellas in a rainy season squall that sets the palm trees blowing wildly.

The turnover of workers is spectacularly rapid. Few of the dozen or so employees at Denso in Foshan and Honda Lock in Zhongshan are older than 22. Many are in their teens. Most are women. Waiting in ragged lines for the factory buses to come to pick them up from their dormitories, they look like pupils on their way to school or teens queuing up for a rock concert.

It hardly seems a hotbed of class war. “I felt guilty leaving the production line. This has really hurt the company, and what hurts them will hurt us,” was a typical response from one young worker. But they say rent, food and other living costs have risen faster than wages. After seeing Taiwan’s Foxconn electronics group raise salaries by more than 60%, they pushed for similar benefits. The way they went about it suggests changes may be afoot, albeit slowly.

Almost all of the employees at the affected firms in Guangdong attended vocational schools, meaning they had a relatively high level of education compared with the average in Guangdong. During the Honda Lock dispute, they hired a legal consultant, Chang Kai, a lecturer at Renmin University, to help them with negotiations.

Thanks to school networks, mobile phones and internet bulletin boards, they are far better organised than the previous generation of migrant workers. Their expectations are also very different. While their parents were willing to “eat bitterness” so they could send money to their desperately poor rural families, many of today’s young workers spend the bulk of their incomes on clothes and phones for themselves.

Demographics are on the side of labour. A bulge in the working-age population has started to thin, which is changing the balance between supply and demand. In recent years the flood of new migrants into Guangdong has slowed. According to labour rights campaigners, this is putting upward pressure on salaries.

“Labour shortages only existed because companies refused to offer decent wages. As soon as a halfway decent salary and reasonable benefits were offered, recruiters had no problem finding new hires,” wrote Geoff Crothall in a blog for China Labour Bulletin.

Many workers are asking for independent collective representation. Unions in China are usually funded by companies, staffed by management and answerable to the Communist party. During an earlier strike at the Honda plant in Zhongshan, union representatives fought workers, injuring two of them. “The union is basically useless,” said Zhou, one of the workers who had been on the strike. “It was wrong of them to beat us.”

Given this background, labour activists predict more unrest. “I think there will be more and more strikes. Workers have started to be concerned about their rights as well as their incomes. They have begun to realise that their economic poverty is due to their political poverty,” said Liu Kaiming at the Institute of Contemporary Observation.

Employers still have the upper hand in many firms. Many locals believe Japanese companies have been targeted because they treat their workers better than most factories in Guangdong. Local academics and journalists say the pay and conditions at Honda and Toyota are better than average in the province.

“I don’t know why the Honda workers went on strike, because their salaries and conditions are better than ours,” said Chen Jian, a 24-year-old employee of the Yongtai Plastic factory, which is only a few miles from the Japanese firm. “We are not satisfied but we will not go on strike. Some workers tried that last year and they were all fired. That is normal.”

4 Jul 2010

He Zongjun earns 1 mao (1p) for each of the 1000 vuvuzelas he moulds on a 12-hour night shift at the Jiying Plastic Products factory near Shanghai. His boss Wu Yijun stopped production of vuvuzelas in April but resumed last month to meet an unexpected surge in global orders for the popular droning trumpets being heard throughout the World Cup football matches in South Africa.

“I don’t watch the World Cup. I need to sleep after working a whole night,” he told the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency.

The migrant worker from the southwestern province of Yunnan, one of China’s poorest regions, earns up to 3000 yuan (£300) a month, based on the piecework rate given by the agency. The long hours and tough conditions mean he earns up to three times the wages of many Chinese labourers.

The company sold about one million of the estimated 50 million vuvuzelas exported this year from China, which accounts for 90% of the global total, Wu said. But he said it was still struggling to recruit more staff to add to the 40 working on the new orders, despite raising the piecework rate by 25%.

Labour is too cheap in China and the rest of Asia, making it difficult to shift to a consumption-led growth model

Analysts say a highly publicised series of recent strikes among Chinese factory workers have raised expectations in a labour market where some regions are already short of skilled workers.

Nearly 2000 workers walked out in late May at the Honda Auto Parts plant in the southern city of Foshan, Guangdong province, the region at the heart of China’s manufacturing boom over the past 30 years. The two-week strike paralysed Honda car production in China and resulted in the workers getting a 25% pay rise to a standard rate of 2000 yuan (£200) per month.

In the past three months, strikes have also hit another Honda supplier in Foshan, a Hyundai plant in Beijing, a Toyota factory in Guangdong, a rubber plant in the northern city of Tianjin, and a large cotton mill in central China’s Pindingshan city. This week hundreds of staff stopped work at the Mitsumi Electric plant in Tianjin, demanding a big increase on the 1500 yuan (£150) a month they can earn for a 70-hour, six-day week.

“Strikes may happen in virtually every corner of China, particularly in the more developed parts,” said Chang-Hee Lee, an industrial relations expert with the International Labour Organisation in Beijing.

“Our research indicates that most strikes involve between a few hundred and a few thousand workers,” said Geoffrey Crothall of the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin. “Anything bigger than that, it tends to be more difficult to organise everybody. Anything smaller than that, the boss is in a more advantageous position to disrupt things,” Crothall said.

The use of security guards or hired thugs to break up smaller strikes or workers’ protests is “not uncommon”, he said. “You’re more likely to see that kind of violent incident – the boss hiring thugs to break up a strike – than, certainly, workers initiating violence.”

He said the ruling Communist Party usually takes a hands-off approach to the strikes and local authorities “just keep a watch” because most strikes are seen as “purely economic” conflicts that do not challenge the government. Although the party controls all news outlets, state media ran the first reports on most of the recent strikes, a sign that the government does not see the strikes as a challenge to its authority.

China Labour Bulletin was set up to support Chinese workers by Han Dongfang, the exiled former leader of an independent trade union in China’s 1989 democracy movement.

In an interview to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1989 protests, which ended after a brutal military crackdown, Han said he saw a small sign of progress in the greater tolerance of the government towards technically illegal industrial action. Some striking workers are sacked but few are arrested by local police anymore, he said.

Lee says a new phase of industrial relations in China began with public consultations on an employment contract law introduced in 2008.

“It was a hugely controversial process because it created a lot of debate … pro-worker, pro-capital debate,” he said. “So through this process workers became aware that there was going to be a new law that would provide much better protection of their labour rights.”

The benefits of the law for protecting employment rights were especially clear to younger members of China’s pool of more than 200 million migrant workers, Lee said.

“The young migrant workers are, generally speaking, better educated than their parents’ generation so they’re more likely to know their rights,” he said. “And the second factor is that they’re different from their parents’ generation, who had a dream of going back to their home villages with a lot of money made in the city. The young-generation workers dream of a better life in the city. But the reality they face is very different from what they dream of, and that gap between the dream and the reality pushed them to take action.”

The recent strikes followed news of 13 separate suicide attempts this year at a vast Foxconn electronics plant in the southern manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. A total of 10 of the young Foxconn workers died, provoking a debate about how much the highly regimented conditions for the 300,000 workers at the Taiwan-owned plant, which has customers such as Apple and Dell, were to blame.

The Foxconn suicides and the strikes were “unrelated incidents but the causes were similar … low pay, long working hours, absence of channels to redress their grievances, and trade union branches that exist only in name”, said Anita Chan, a researcher on labour in China at the University of ­Technology in Sydney.

The Honda workers were “well organised, strategic and assertive”, Chan said in a commentary in the official China Daily newspaper. “The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) has realised that the Honda strike is a different form of labour protest, not least because it goes to the heart of a problem: what is the union’s legitimate role.”

ACFTU was originally “perceived as part of the state”, like trade unions in other socialist states, but has found it difficult to “adapt to the environment of market-based employment legislation”, Lee said.

“Often union leadership at the enterprise level is under heavy influence of employers or even composed of senior managers of the enterprise.”

The striking Honda Auto Parts workers elected their own representatives and condemned the plant’s ACFTU-affiliated union officials for scuffling with some of the strikers and issuing a public apology for the strike.

“Our struggle for rights is not a struggle to protect the mere interests of 1800 workers. We are concerned with the rights and interests of the workers in the whole country,” the Honda workers said in a statement.

A letter of support for the Honda and Foxconn workers has reopened the long-standing divisions among the 78 million members of the Communist Party between its pragmatic majority and the “old Left”, loyal to its roots under Mao Zedong. Five retired officials and scholars issued an appeal drenched in Marxist rhetoric.

“For the past 30 years, China has relied on several hundred million cheap workers from rural areas to create this export-oriented ‘world factory’ and to bring about consistent, rapid growth in China’s economy,” they said.

“At the same time, workers’ basic rights have long been neglected. From the Foxconn tragedy, we hear screams coming from the lives of new-generation migrant workers, warning the entire society to rethink this development model leveraged upon the sacrifice of people’s basic dignity.”

About one-quarter of Chinese ­workers have not had a pay rise in five years, despite double-digit economic growth and consumer-price inflation, according to an ACFTU survey, while China has one the world’s largest income gaps between its tens of millions of super-rich and the rest of its 1.3 billion people.

The People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper, carried an editorial last month saying: “The time has come to narrow the gulf between rich and poor, which is stifling consumer demand here.” Premier Wen Jiabao weighed in with a call for the country to “treat young migrant workers as they would treat their own children”.

“China has become one of the most unequal societies in terms of income distribution,” Lee said. “The government is trying to redress income distribution issues by policy intervention. At the same time, it realises that workers’ bargaining power is also crucial for rebalancing the distribution at the enterprise level.”

But predictions of a workers’ uprising or a flight of multinational manufacturers from China look premature in a nation whose leaders appear determined to do everything in their power to maintain Communist Party rule.

“The change should be welcomed,” Ben Simpfendorfer, a Hong Kong-based China economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland, said of the rising wages. “Labour is too cheap in China and the rest of Asia, making it difficult to shift to a consumption-led growth model,” Simpfendorfer said.

“I expect to see continuous improvement of working conditions and wages because China is developing so fast and also the workers are becoming increasingly capable of pushing for better wages and working conditions, either through collective action, like a strike, or through collective bargaining,” Lee said. “But I don’t think this new trend of strikes will unsettle the development of the labour market system in China. There may be a continuous number of strikes by workers in the auto sector, the electronics sector or whatever, but it is still not going to unsettle the entire labour relations system in China.”

Crothall said that although labour activism is increasing, there are no signs of attempts to set up industry-wide independent trade unions.

Any such attempt would most likely lead to the arrest of the organisers, following the example of Liu Xiaobo, a dissident writer who co-organised the Charter ‘08 for democratic reform. In December Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion.

BEIJING // Labour rights campaigners have warned that more industrial discontent is likely in China despite a round of minimum wage increases that took effect yesterday.

The minimum pay rates in at least nine provinces and cities were increased, in some cases by as much as a third, after a series of strikes over pay at manufacturing plants.

While the wage increases had largely been planned in advance and announced this year before the latest wave of strikes, academics said yesterday they were at least partly prompted by an ongoing aim to reduce the frequency of industrial action.

Patrick Chovanec, an associate professor in the school of economics and management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the wage increases reflected a government policy to “reduce social unrest and maximise social harmony” by spreading the benefits of economic growth across the country and to different social classes. This had been a consistent aim under Hu Jintao, the president, he said.

Yesterday’s wage increases covered geographical areas including the central province of Henan, where the minimum wage increased by one third to 600 yuan (Dh325) a month, and the capital, Beijing, where there was a 20 per cent rise to 960 yuan a month.

China’s business capital, Shanghai, and the key manufacturing province of Guangdong, which has borne the brunt of recent strike action, have already increased minimum wages this year by about 20 per cent.

In total, more than 20 provinces are thought to have introduced or planned wage increases this year.

Recent industrial action was partly a consequence of a shortage of skilled rather than unskilled labour, Mr Chovanec said, and he cautioned that a rise in the minimum wage “may or may not have much of an impact” on skilled workers of the kind who have tended to strike in the past few weeks.

This week’s pay rises followed a period of salary stagnation for many workers after minimum wage rises were frozen more than a year ago to help companies get through the global economic slump. This stagnation in earnings has been accompanied by high inflation, meaning that increases were necessary, said Ren Xianfang, a China analyst at IHS Global Insight in Beijing.

“Inflation in China is getting to the point where it’s creating pressure for wage inflation,” she said. “Manufacturing workers need higher wages to offset the increases in the cost of living.”

Significant increases in the minimum wage in percentage terms were not enough to turn it into “a decent living”, said Geoffrey Crothall, an editor at the China Labour Bulletin, a pressure group based in Hong Kong.

Mr Crothall “expects to see” more strikes on top of those that have recently caused the car makers Toyota and Honda to stop production when employees at parts suppliers walked out. Managers felt compelled to offer large wage rises, in some cases as much as 24 per cent, to try to get staff back to work.

“The basic problem is that even after this increase, the minimum wage is still a very low wage,” Mr Crothall said. “Workers still have to do long hours to make a decent living.”

He predicted that in the coming months workers in the garment and electronics industries in particular would be “pushed even harder” to fulfil orders in the run-up to Christmas, and this could lead to walkouts.

“Often the summer disputes are triggered by high temperatures,” he said. “If the boss is too cheap to have a decent air conditioner or any air conditioner, conditions can become intolerable and workers will quickly go out on strike.”

Aside from reducing the potential for industrial unrest, the minimum wage increases are also part of the government’s aim of boosting domestic demand through giving workers a “bigger share of the pie”, Mr Chovanec said. Wages made up only 39.7 per cent of China’s GDP in 2007, down from 51.4 per cent in 1995 and considerably below the figure for western nations such as the UK, where wages make up about 53 per cent of GDP.

But wage rises are not guaranteed to improve domestic consumption, he cautioned, saying that instead people might simply save more. Concerns over costs such as for health care were a big factor behind high savings rates in China, he said. Without improved healthcare coverage and welfare benefits, there might not be increases in consumer spending.

BEIJING, Thursday 1 July 2010 (AFP) – Production at a Japanese-owned electronics factory in northern China was suspended for the third day on Thursday as 3,000 workers went on strike over pay and benefits, the company said.

The dispute is the latest in a spate of labour unrest to hit foreign-run companies in China, which has highlighted growing discontent among millions of workers over low salaries and poor conditions.

The strike at the Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co Ltd factory in the city of Tianjin began late Tuesday and workers were still refusing to resume their duties on Thursday, the Tokyo-based company said.

“All the (production) lines are currently stopped,” the company said in a statement. “Regarding the requests for pay increase and other conditions, we are continuing negotiations.”

Most of the 3,000 workers at the factory, which makes electronic components and computer parts, had stopped work, the official Xinhua news agency said Wednesday, citing several employees.

A worker surnamed Wang complained his monthly salary of 1,500 yuan (220 dollars) was too low considering he worked six days a week, two hours of overtime every day and received no benefits.

“I have been working here for almost two years,” Wang told Xinhua. “I can only get a monthly salary. There is no insurance whatsoever.”

Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda also have been forced to halt production at assembly plants several times in recent weeks after strikes at auto parts suppliers.

Taiwan high-tech giant Foxconn offered its employees in southern China wage hikes after a spate of worker suicides, and is now planning to shift some of its production to other parts of the country to counter rising costs.

Strikes have halted work at two Japanese-owned car assembly factories in southern China – the latest in a wave of labour disputes.

A Toyota plant in Guangdong province has stood idle since Tuesday after workers at a nearby parts supplier, Denso, walked out the day before.

Honda said one of its joint venture plants has also had to stop work.

The strikes highlight growing discontent among millions of workers over low pay and poor conditions.

The BBC’s Damian Grammaticas in Beijing says their industrial actions are not legal, but they have seen other strikes in recent weeks force managers to conceded pay rises of up to 25%.

And so the stoppages appear to be copycat actions by an increasingly assertive labour force, our correspondent says.
Continue reading the main story

I feel not respected by the human resources department – they often say ‘You can leave if you think other plants are better’, when we ask for something

Worker on strike Denso Corporation, Guangdong Is era of cheap labour over?

It is not clear when production at the Toyota factory in Guangdong province, China’s manufacturing hub, will restart.

The strike at Denso, which makes fuel injectors and other parts, began on Monday when more than 200 staff downed tools in a dispute over pay, state media reported.

“I feel not respected by the human resources department. They often say ‘You can leave if you think other plants are better’, when we ask for something,” one worker was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

Local government and union officials are trying to help resolve the stand-off, Xinhua said.
Social unrest

Last week production at one of Toyota’s main assembly plants in China was hit by a three-day strike at one of the carmaker’s affiliated suppliers.

Meanwhile another of Japan’s big carmakers, Honda, was also forced to halt production on Wednesday when an assembly plant run by its Chinese joint venture Guangqi Honda Automobile stopped operations after strikes at a Japanese supplier.

The Honda plant is expected to resume operations on Thursday, a Beijing-based Honda spokesman told AFP.

Honda’s car assembly lines in southern China have been disrupted several times in recent weeks because of labour disputes.

The BBC’s China editor Shirong Chen says the government has tolerated strikes at foreign-owned plants, which are obliged to respect workers’ rights, but maintains strict control at Chinese-owned factories for fear of widespread social unrest.

By: Zacks Equity Research
June 17, 2010

Although Honda Motor Co. ( HMC – Analyst Report ) has dissolved its labor dispute at the Zhongshan plant in Guangdong , the southern province of China , it is still far from being relieved. Last Monday, the factory manager at the plant summoned the plant workers to end the strike and return to work or else lose the job.

Minutes after the factory manager called in, all but half a dozen strikers were seen going back to the factory for fear of losing their jobs, although dissatisfied with their present remuneration. The replacement workers have possibly taken over the jobs of the remaining workers.

However, the workers, who have returned to jobs at the plant, have threatened to go back to strike on the same ground, rejecting the company’s proposed 20% hike in wages and benefits. Some workers are reportedly hindering or slowing down work at the company to impede its operations.

These workers have a different take on the story. The workers revealed that they resumed work only at the request of a Chinese government official. The official has promised to meet their representatives to resolve the strike by mediating with the company for the demanded pay hike by Friday.

The Zhongshan plant belongs to Honda Lock Co. – a supplier of door-locking systems – 65% of which is owned by Honda and the remaining by Xiang Suo, a business owned by the municipal government. Last week, about 1,500 workers at the plant went on strike demanding a doubling of basic pay to about $234 per month.

The strike at the Zhongshan plant is the third one that Honda faced in less than a month in the country. On May 17, the automaker faced the first labor strike at its Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co. plant in Foshan , Guangdong . About 1,850 workers, who manufacture transmissions and engine parts at the plant, walked out demanding a pay raise.

This caused the company to halt production at all four assembly plants in the country due to a shortage of parts. However, Honda resolved that strike in the first week of June by agreeing to pay raises of 24% to 32%.

Honda faced its second labor strike at its Foshan Fengfu Autoparts Co. plant in Foshan, Guangdong , also over a pay hike. The plant is a joint venture between Honda subsidiary Yutaka Giken Co. and a Taiwanese partner, and manufactures exhaust and muffler components.

Honda has settled the second strike as well by reaching an undisclosed agreement with the workers. The workers ended the two-day strike and returned to work on Wednesday last week.

Similar to both the strike-affected plants at Foshan , Guangdong , the Zhongshan plant was acutely understaffed. However, the bargaining strength of the Zhongshan plant workers is weaker than the Foshan plants workers as the former can run on less-skilled and less-educated workers than the latter.

As a result, Honda had agreed to the full pay raise demands at the Foshan plants while it has kept the Zhongshan strikers at odds. Firstly, the company has kept the workers at the Zhongshan plant under pressure by hiring replacement workers. Secondly, it has increased wages and benefits at the plant that were considerably less than the near doubling of wages that the strikers had demanded.

Labor strikes in China are becoming more and more apparent as workers in the country have started opposing the low-cost model of the country as a manufacturing base. Further, the laborers in the country have gained bargaining power due to the shortage of blue-collared workers in the country.

Many foreign companies including Daimler AG (DDAIF – Analyst Report), Ford Motor Co. (F – Analyst Report), General Motors (MTLQQ – Analyst Report), Coca-Cola (KO – Analyst Report) and PepsiCo. (PEP – Analyst Report) have strengthened their manufacturing footprint in the country over the years in order to take advantage of the cheap labor. However, the workers are offered only a negligible portion of their income.

The Chinese government, who has discouraged strikes and censored reports about labor unrests so far, is also showing an inclination to change the low-cost manufacturing model of the country. It has reportedly encouraged local governments to raise minimum wage standards and asked companies to treat workers with greater dignity.

The labor dispute has put Honda in a backfoot with respect to its plan to expand production in China. The automaker’s sales in China accounted for 17% of its global sales in 2009. It will increase sales in the country by 9% this year to 630,000 vehicles.

Further, the automaker plans to lift production capacity in the country by 28% to 830,000 vehicles a year by the second half of 2012. It will also introduce two new models in the country to meet the growing demand for cars.

June 18 (Bloomberg) — Workers at a Toyota Motor Corp. affiliate in China went on strike, adding to a series of assembly-line walkouts that underscore pressure for higher wages in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The Toyoda Gosei Co. plant in the northern city of Tianjin has been partially shut since yesterday and talks with employees are ongoing, said Shingo Handa, a spokesman for the company, based in Japan’s Aichi prefecture. Toyota’s car production in China hasn’t been affected, said Ririko Takeuchi, a Tokyo-based spokesman for the automaker.

The stoppage comes as a Honda Motor Co. unit seeks to prevent workers at a parts factory in the region from resuming a strike. The carmaker said it hasn’t received word yet on whether an agreement was reached by a 3 p.m. deadline for wage negotiations, set by management and workers. Honda raised pay 24 percent to end an earlier dispute as two previous strikes in China disrupted output, fanning demands for higher pay at rivals.

“The Honda situation could be the start of a wave, as pent-up demand for wage increases surfaces and migrant workers, for example, become more assertive,” said Andrew Thompson, co- head of the automotive practice for KPMG in Shanghai. The pressure for higher pay will continue “as China’s economy continues to boom and people’s aspirations grow,” he said.

Deadline

Employees at another Toyoda Gosei company in China, Tianjin Star Light Rubber and Plastic Co., also struck briefly on June 15, Handa said. The strike was resolved when the company offered workers a pay increase, said Zhu Hai Feng, a Shanghai-based Toyoda Gosei spokesman, without elaborating.

Toyota fell 1.7 percent to close at 3,240 yen in Tokyo trading, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average was little changed. Toyoda Gosei declined 0.4 percent and Honda dropped 1.7 percent.

Management and union leaders at Honda Lock (Guangdong) Co., a supplier to Honda in Zhongshan, Guangdong, aimed to reach a wage agreement today to prevent workers from striking for a second time at the facility.

Yoshiyuki Kuroda, a spokesman for Honda Motor, said the company was still awaiting word on the outcome of the talks. Spokespeople for Honda Lock couldn’t immediately be reached to confirm whether an agreement with workers had been made by the 3 p.m. deadline.

‘Plenty of Factories’

“I would definitely get another job if I am not happy with the pay increase,” Du Jun, a 20-year-old worker at the white- walled Honda Lock factory, said before the deadline. “There are plenty of factories around here I can get a job from,” said Du, who moved to the region from his parents’ farm in Guangxi province last year.

The Honda Lock strike has yet to affect Honda Motor’s car production in the country, the automaker has said.

Higher investment and improved wages in western China are deterring workers from migrating, pushing up pay in more industrialized regions like Guangdong in the south, David Abrahamson, project manager at the China Center for Labor and Environment, said by phone from Shenzhen.

Taiwanese electronics maker Foxconn Technology Group said this month it will double salaries for its lowest-paid workers after at least 10 Chinese employees killed themselves this year.

“In the short term, a rise in wages is negative, but it’s positive in the medium- and long-term,” said Hideo Arimura, who helps oversee $2.2 billion at Mizuho Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. “If wages rise, people will spend more, benefiting the companies eventually.”

Gas Stoves

A factory owned by Xiaotian (Zhongshan) Industrial Co., a maker of gas stoves and electric fans 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from Honda Lock’s plant, promised workers a monthly increase of at least 250 yuan, excluding overtime, last week.

Xiaotian Industrial decided to boost pay because “living costs are higher now and it should help relieve some pressure on labor shortages,” said Ms. Ou, a hiring manager at the Xiaotian factory in Zhongshan, who declined to give her full name. The company decided to raise wages before walkouts at Honda Lock and two other Honda suppliers in the past month, she said.

Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest carmaker, said June 9 it will spend 520 million euros ($622 million) to add a new plant in Guangdong as the country’s car demand booms. The new factory, set to open in 2013, will join similar plants in the area built by other global automakers such as Toyota and Nissan Motor Co.

Some factories in China are losing as many as 25 percent of their workers a month, reflecting increased competition among employers to hire staff, said Ian Spaulding, Hong Kong-based managing director at Infact Global Partners, which advises factory owners on China work practices.

More than 20 Chinese provinces and cities raised minimum wages this year, the Shenzhen city government said on its website last Wednesday. In Shenzhen, which raised minimum wages an average of 15.8 percent, the government said higher pay will help companies recruit workers and will boost consumption.

–Takako Iwatani, Akiko Ikeda, Mark Lee, Liza Lin, Stephanie Wong, Naoko Fujimura, Yuki Hagiwara. Editors: Ian Rowley, Terje Langeland

June 18, 2010

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Compal Electronics Inc., the world’s largest contract laptop maker, said Friday that China’s labor shortage and rising wages will pose a big challenge to it amid the recovery in the computer market.

But instead of moving to lower-wage countries, Compal will increase the wages of its Chinese workers and try to improve their working environment, said company chairman Hsu Sheng-hsiung.

He said the wages will increase by a “small amount” but refused to elaborate.

Compal churned out 38 million laptops last year — 23 percent of the world total — mostly from its production base in the Chinese city of Kunshan, near Shanghai.

With computer sales expected to increase 20 percent this year, Hsu said Compal will set up several facilities in China’s interior to meet demand.

“By 2030, 80 percent of China will be urbanized,” he told a shareholders meeting. “Wages are still low in the west, but will catch up rapidly. Corporations must not relocate for the sake of wage concerns like nomads chasing new grasslands.”

With an economic recovery in full swing in China, workers have begun demanding significant wage increases and showed far less tolerance for harsh work conditions than their predecessors did only five years ago.

The problem of poor worker morale in China came into stark relief earlier this month amid a spate of suicides at the giant electronics facility of Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group in southern China. Stung by the suicides, the company promised to raise basic wages at the facility from 900 yuan ($130) to 2,000 yuan, beginning in October.

Jun 18, 2010

Residents of the demolished houses in Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province, were injured by the police during the protest and thrown into the street.
In order to stop authorities from demolishing her house and taking her land for the purpose of ‘economic development’, Li Wei set herself on fire. The 60-year-old woman is currently hospitalized and in critical condition with third degree burns over 37 percent of her body.

June 13 was the day the authorities were going to expropriate her land to build a factory for the Jingyue Economic Development Area in northwestern China’s Changchun City. Li Wei and her husband Li Xiuchen were having breakfast when the local government sent a dozen cars and over 50 people to her house, telling the couple that they were taking their house down, according to Wenhuabao (China Culture Daily).

When they tried to force Li Wei out of her home she dowsed herself with gasoline and set herself on fire. The intruders then rushed out of the house.

A doctor at the hospital said Li could die considering that she also suffers from a heart problem and diabetes.

The Epoch Times called the Office of Letters and Calls of the Jingyue Economic Development Area for comment. The man on duty said that the incident was being handled “according to procedures.”

The couple had been offered 13,000 yuan (US$1,900) for their house, but turned down the offer.

According to Wenhuabao, Li did not regret what she did. “I was not given any choice. I had to fight for my house with my life,” Li said.

In the past few years, many such tragic incidents have taken place. The combination of land grabs by rapacious officials under the guise of public development, and the lack of established means for expressing dissent in China’s still closed political environment, are behind the incidents of desperation.

In November 2009, Tang Fuzhen, a businesswoman in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, set herself on fire on the roof of her house, in front of police. She died as a result.

On Dec 14, 2009, Xi Xinzhu from Beijing set himself on fire to protest forced demolition.

On Jan 26, 2010, Zeng Huanwei, resident of Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, lit himself on fire to protest a road broadening project that his house was a victim of.

On March 3, 2010, 70-year-old Wang Cuiyun from Wuhan City, Hubei Province attempted to stop a demolition in progress. An earth scraper threw her into a ditch, and she died as a result.

On March 10, 2010, Han Huabin from Huayin City, Jiangsu Province, poured gasoline on himself in front of government officials who came to demolish his house. As the demolition proceeded he set himself on fire and incurred serious injuries.

On March 27, 2010, a father and son from Lianyungang City burned themselves in an attempt to stop town officials from taking down their pig farm. The 68-year-old son, Tao Huixi, died and the 92-year-old Tao Xingyao was injured.

On April 29, 2010, four hundred desperate Chinese farmers from Changchunling Village in Heilongjiang Province resorted to lying on railroad tracks to protest government land grabs. Armed police dispersed them with tear gas. A dozen farmers suffered injuries, with two badly hurt.

On May 10, 2010, 91-year-old Liu Xian from Yongchun County, Fujian Province, drank pesticide and killed himself because he feared that he would have no place to stay after his house was torn down.

Forced relocation for the purpose of infrastructure or luxury developments are common in China and have become a source of festering unrest, especially because of the inadequate compensation generally given to the landowners.

To prepare for the World Expo, Shanghai officials displaced 18,000 families and 270 factories. Many residents who lived near the Huangpu River were forced to relocate and given minimal compensation. Countless have become homeless while some have been detained, beaten, and even killed.

The Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing recently published a report that outlines the urgency of “maintenance of social stability” (often code for maintenance of regime stability) in the face of social conflicts, social unrest, and mass uprisings throughout the country.

The report says, “Without an effective outlet for people to express their interests, unresolved conflicts will accumulate in an increasingly unstable society.

The growing social disputes stemming from violations of human rights and property rights, predominantly related to forced evictions, subsequent demolitions, and unpaid wages, are described as the leading causes of instability in China today.”

Beijing, June 18 (AFP) Police in the capital of China’s restive Xinjiang will launch a security clampdown ahead of the anniversary of ethnic riots, the government said today, in an indication they fear further unrest.

Authorities in the city of Urumqi, which exploded in deadly riots last July 5, will “increase the police presence in key places, vital sectors and public areas,” the Xinjiang region’s state-run Tianshannet website said.

Police will also ramp up inspections of all people transporting and using dangerous explosive materials and “severely deal” with those found violating the rules.

Xinjiang had already been beefing up security and authorities have warned of a continued “separatist” threat in the region after the violence in Urumqi last July between Muslim ethnic Uighurs and members of China’s dominant Han group.

The violence saw nearly 200 people killed and up to 1,700 injured, according to government figures.

June 13

ZHONGSHAN, China — Striking workers at a Honda auto parts factory here in southeastern China have won higher wages — but not necessarily for themselves.

Factory managers began hiring a steady stream of replacement workers on Sunday, and a significant number of strikers went back to work after increases in wages and benefits, even as many others remained on strike.

The 20 or so members of the factory’s new council of workers, chosen by the workers to represent them when the strike began on Wednesday morning, went into hiding on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, fearing retaliation by the local authorities.

The auto parts factory increased wages by 11 percent and an allowance for food and housing by 33 percent, as of Sunday. The combined increase in wages and benefits was considerably less than the near doubling of wages alone sought by the strikers. But the increases offered by the factory were enough to make the jobs attractive to replacement workers.

The remaining strikers held a small rally outside the factory on Sunday morning but then went home and made no effort to picket the factory as normal operations resumed.

“We don’t want to be too extreme or else the local government will put us in jail,” said one of the strikers in an interview at a nearby shopping mall. He insisted on anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The striker added that a labor official from the municipal government had told them that the factory management was acting in compliance with the law and that the workers had broken the law through disruptive behavior.

Honda Lock, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honda in Japan, owns 65 percent of the factory. The other 35 percent is held by Xiang Suo, a local business owned by the municipal government.

Honda advertised on television for replacement workers and hired employment agencies to help find them, a factory recruiter said. Young men and women showing up at the factory gates looking for work said that they had heard about job opportunities through word of mouth or had met factory managers who walked through the nearby shopping mall seeking workers.

Striking workers had held a rare protest march on Friday morning, chanting slogans as they walked down the main road of an industrial park. A double row of black-clad police wearing helmets with face masks and carrying small, round riot shields blocked the march where the road intersected a wide avenue.

By midday on Sunday, four Chinese recruiters wearing white jump suits with bright red “Honda Lock” logos had set up a recruitment tent at the side of the avenue, about 10 yards from where the riot police had stood. With a dark blue roof, a long table covered in red and plenty of comfortable, light blue plastic chairs with arm rests, the recruitment tent proved an attractive stopping point for curious young men and women who were walking or riding bicycles along the road.

The strike here could help Honda end up with a younger workforce with fewer family obligations that might distract them from their jobs. Most visitors to the tent were enthusiastically welcomed by the four recruiters, but not all.

When a woman holding a baby showed up early Sunday afternoon, she seemed to be the only visitor told that the factory would operate on three shifts and she might be assigned to an inconvenient shift. The woman left without applying for a job.

The factory is a long-established operation that had a stable work force and offered a housing allowance for workers to rent tiny apartments, instead of providing dormitories, in which raising a baby can be more difficult.

A Honda spokesman in Beijing did not respond to numerous calls and messages for comment, while Honda managers at the factory also declined to comment on the record about personnel issues.

The strikers here had wanted to match the pay obtained by workers at a Honda transmission factory in nearby Foshan nearly two weeks ago. But they appear to have miscalculated on an important point.

Transmission factories are highly automated operations that require skilled employees with considerable training. The transmission factory workers in Foshan mostly have the Chinese equivalent of community college degrees in subjects like mechanical engineering.
By contrast, the factory here assembles door locks, rear and side mirrors and other low-value products. One of the factory recruiters at the recruitment tent said that Honda only required a junior high school education for job applicants.

Honda is still trying to lure back strikers, however. A large sign at the factory gates said that last Wednesday through Saturday, the days when the factory was closed because of the strike, would be counted as paid work days. Management also offered double pay for hours worked on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, as the factory tries to catch up on lost production.

Striking workers who do not return by the end of the day on Tuesday will be dealt with according to national labor laws, the factory notice said. Those laws allow the dismissal of employees who do not show up for work.

A young woman who came to the factory gates looking for work on Sunday said that she had traveled two hours by bus after hearing by phone from a friend that Honda was hiring and offered better working conditions than many factories.

“I can’t stand the 12-hour shifts at other factories — here it’s only eight hours,” she said.

The crumbling of the strike shows that employers and the authorities retain powerful options in China in the face or rising labor unrest over recent weeks. Strong economic growth has fueled demand for factory workers even as more young Chinese are choosing to go to college instead.

The total population of young Chinese has leveled off because of tightening enforcement through the 1980s and 1990s of China’s “one child policy.”

But laws and social norms still favor employers. There is little stigma associated with strike breakers and scant sign of worker solidarity in what remains officially a communist country.

Asked what would become of the strikers, several replacement workers shrugged and said they did not know.

The strike activist who didn’t want to be named said that he had nothing against the replacement workers, either. The new employees are trying to make a living, he said, adding that “they don’t know me.”

After allowing nationwide television and newspaper reporting of the early days of the transmission factory strike, Beijing authorities have imposed severe restrictions, without explanation, on the ability of the domestic media to report on labor unrest.

The Chinese government’s willingness to help a Japanese company replace Chinese workers with strike breakers could cause a backlash in China if it became widely known. Some hostility toward Japan still simmers in China as a result of atrocities during World War II.

Wed June 2

BEIJING (Reuters) – A rare burst of labor unrest in China has been resolved with hefty pay increases, illustrating how the balance of power in the country’s vast factories is slowly but surely tilting toward workers.

China

Rising wages in the workshop of the world might seem to pose unsettling implications for the global economy in the form of thinning profits for companies and cost inflation for consumers.

But this disregards more important, positive developments. By spreading the fruits of the China’s stunning growth more evenly, higher incomes will help to boost domestic consumption and rectify imbalances that have dogged the global economy.

“If China wants to build up a new growth model driven by consumption, you have to find a channel to redistribute GDP more to labor, especially to the low-income class,” Ting Lu, an economist with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, said.

“Now this is being not just driven by politics, but by a natural changing balance in the demand and supply of labor.”

Honda Motor Co this week gave a 24 percent pay raise to striking workers at a car parts factory in southern China. The plant resumed full production on Wednesday.

Foxconn on Wednesday said its workers in a different part of southern China would get 30 percent raises after a spate of suicides cast a troubling light on conditions at its factory which churns out top-tier electronic products, including Apple’s iPhone.

The Honda and Foxconn stories have been sensational in a country that stamps out strikes and suppresses unflattering news, but they are just a small part of a much broader wave of wage increases in the Chinese manufacturing sector.

Pay for China’s 150 million or so migrant workers increased 19 percent in 2008 and 16 percent in 2009, even though exporters were hit hard by the global financial crisis, according to Cai Fang, head of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

TURNING POINT

“Overall Chinese income levels, especially for blue-collar workers, are expected to grow faster than before because fewer new workers will enter the labor force every year,” said Maggie Li, an analyst at Mercer, a human resource consultancy.

This trend will accelerate from about 2012, she said.

In economic terms, China has arrived at its Lewis turning point, a period in development when the economy shifts from a labor surplus to a labor shortage and wages start to increase more rapidly, especially for the unskilled.

Chinese workers have made big strides in recent years in absolute terms as their wages rose about 8 percent a year. The problem is that these increases have not kept up with the broader economy, which has boomed at a double-digit pace.

Labor’s share of national income declined to 39.7 percent in 2007 from 53.4 percent in 1996. During that same time, the corporate share rose to 31.3 percent from 21.2 percent, official statistics show.

“China’s wage level has stayed very low for a long time despite some increases in recent years and this has depressed domestic demand,” said Yang Yiyong, a research director of a think-tank under the National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful economic planning agency.

Beijing has declared the promotion of private consumption to be a priority as it seeks to re-orient the economy away from a model that has relied too heavily on investment and exports.

CONSUMPTION GROWTH

The central government has launched a flurry of incentive programs to encourage people to buy home appliances in the countryside and cars in cities. It is also building up the social safety net to stimulate more discretionary spending. And some cities have even started offering shopping vouchers.

But nothing will be as powerful as income growth.

“A 100 percent increase in wages of lower-income earners will generate about a 70 to 90 percent increase in consumption,” said Wang Han, an economist with research firm CEBM.

Huang Yiping, an economist at Peking University, cautioned that the government cannot sit back and wait for higher incomes alone to boost consumption. It will have to craft policies that promote the service and skilled-labor sectors to ensure the continued creation of jobs as wages increase.

For the world economy, the conclusion is more unambiguously positive.

Rising Chinese wages point to an inexorable, if gradual, reduction of its whopping trade surplus. Prices of manufactured goods may increase a touch globally, but other countries will step into the breach.

“Low-income countries should be able to grow more rapidly in labor-intensive industries. Almost all other countries should experience improvement in their current accounts,” Huang wrote in a recent research paper.

As the cost of labor increases, China’s potential growth rate will inevitably slow to about 9 percent a year from 11 percent, said Lu of Merrill Lynch. But that is still very fast and nothing to fear, he added.

“If we want to seek sustainable growth and if we want to seek happiness, maybe in the next stage we will focus more on redistribution than growth,” Lu said.

2010-06-03
Residents of a quake-stricken county are angrily rejecting plans to move them from their land.

HONG KONG—Scores of Tibetan residents of an earthquake-damaged western Chinese county are protesting local government plans to take possession of choice properties to reconstruct ravaged homes, schools, offices, and other sites, Tibetan sources say.

Some properties claimed by the authorities suffered no damage in the April earthquake, which left nearly 3,000 people dead, according to Tibetans in Yushu county, Qinghai province, as well as Tibetans in exile who said they have been in touch with relatives there.

“The local government has forced local residents out of their houses—they said they had to clean the area to build office buildings, schools, and parks, and they are planning to take away the sites for our homes and our fields,” one Yushu resident said.

“This has upset the local Tibetans, and they have argued the land has belonged to them for generations. So they have been going to the local government office in their hundreds over the last few days,” he said.

“Every day there are about 100 Tibetans protesting and appealing for the right to return to their land and fields, but the local authorities didn’t listen.”

Another Tibetan from Yushu said that one of his friends had seen “several hundreds” of Tibetans at the protest.

He said he was unsure whether Tibetans or monks had been taken away by police, but suggested that “people don’t want to talk about it out of fear.”

The man said many local Tibetan families are unwilling to accept the government’s offer of 80 square meter (860 square foot) homes as compensation for handing over their land.

“We Tibetans always have big families with many family members living together. Therefore, an 80 square meter unit is too small for them,” the Yushu resident said.

Officials dispatched
A local police officer, contacted by telephone, confirmed that incidents were occurring but said, “I don’t have any clear information for you.”

But an official at the Yushu county government office said in a telephone interview that more than 1,000 Tibetan protesters had been stationed in front of the building for days, demanding a resolution to the land dispute issue.

The woman, who did not give her name, said officials had been dispatched to talk to the protesters.

“[The petitioners] wanted to speak with some officials and they were able to do so. But not [Chinese Vice President] Xi Jinping. The incident is still unresolved. They say their land has been taken away by the government and they want it back—want their homes back. They have petitioned here every day, though there are less people today,” she said.

No Tibetans had been arrested, the official said.

Police blocked Tibetan protesters from approaching Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping when he visited the area on Wednesday, another resident confirmed.

‘The best sites’

A Yushu native who now lives in the United States said his family who remain there have complained that the “local government selected the best sites for the construction of government offices, schools, and public parks.”

“The Tibetans who are government employees are following government instructions, but the others have appealed to revoke these decisions. They also protested … and argued with the officials that whether they have lived 10 or 20 years in the area, they will not move from these sites.”

“Even during the Cultural Revolution, many Tibetans lost their loved ones but they insisted on staying on the land of their ancestors.”

Another Tibetan who now lives in New York, and who still has family members living in Yushu, said that the Chinese government had begun to construct small apartment units for relocation far from Yushu, which he described as ill-suited to the local Tibetan lifestyle.

“Local Tibetans are trying to stop the government from building these small apartment units. They prefer assistance from international charity organizations or would rather slowly build their own houses than live in these government-provided small dwellings.”

Praise for monks
The Yushu native said Tibetans from the area are largely self-sufficient and praised Tibetan monks for their quick efforts in providing relief materials to victims of the April 14 earthquake.

“Some victims didn’t get anything from the government even three or four weeks after the earthquake because the relief materials had to go through many checks and verifications. Tibetan monks hand-delivered relief supplies to each victim without delay.”

Kunga Tashi, the Chinese liaison officer in the office of Tibet in New York City expressed regret that Tibetan monks had been forced by the government to leave the disaster area soon after the earthquake.

“The religious beliefs of Tibetan monks maintain that good deeds should be done for ordinary people. But to expel them from the disaster area for an unclear reason has injured their souls and may lead to some kind of instability in the long run,” Kunga Tashi said.

Soon after the quake, China’s powerful propaganda department called for curbs on reporting of “negative news” about the earthquake that struck Yushu.

In its April 25 directive to news organizations, the central propaganda department warned state media not to focus too much on the relief work carried out by Tibetans themselves in the worst-hit regions of the remote province.

“Talk of the earthquake in ‘scientific terms;’ do not criticize the earthquake forecasting agency; do not focus too much on the efforts by Buddhist monks to help the victims; and give extensive coverage to the appeals for donations organized by state-owned CCTV,” the directive said.

Tibetan residents of Yushu said state-run media coverage of the rescue and clean-up operation was already far from reflecting the situation on the ground.

China’s official Xinhua news agency says about 2,700 people died in the quake, while Tibetans estimates are much higher.

June 1

TOKYO — The strike that has crippled production at Honda Motor’s factories in China has come as a wake-up call to Japan’s flagship exporters as they seek to remain competitive and push into China’s burgeoning market with the help of low-wage workers.

The strike by Chinese workers to protest pay and working conditions has cost Honda, Japan’s second-largest carmaker after Toyota, thousands of units in lost production in the world’s biggest auto market. The walkout began on May 17 at a Honda transmission factory in Foshan, in the southeast, and has shut down all four of Honda’s factories on the mainland.

“Honda takes the situation very seriously,” said Yasuko Matsuura, a spokeswoman for Honda in Tokyo. The company “is working toward reaching a resolution as soon as possible.” On Tuesday, there were conflicting accounts by the company and Chinese employees about how soon workers might return to their jobs.

In Tokyo, the strike has driven home a salient point: as Chinese incomes and expectations rise in line with the country’s rapid growth, while Japan’s own economy falters, the two countries face a realignment that could permanently alter the way their economies interact.

To complicate the picture, Japanese companies see the Chinese as crucial consumers of their goods to make up for a shrinking and aging market at home. Some of the most profitable Japanese companies, like Fast Retailing, which runs the budget clothing line Uniqlo, have relied on production in China since the 1990s to keep prices low.

“Japan is starting to realize that the age of cheap wages in China is coming to an end, and companies that looked to China only for lower costs need to change course,” said Tomoo Marukawa, a specialist on the Chinese economy at Tokyo University.

Despite the consequences for production costs, a rise in wages and standards of living in China would be welcomed by many Japanese exporters. The same companies that produce in China have also moved to sell their wares there, moving factories to the mainland to reduce costs further and meet the needs of local customers.

In Uniqlo’s case, as incomes in China rose, it followed up with local stores in 2002; the company has opened 64 outlets in China and aims to open 1,000 stores there in the next decade.

And yet, for Honda, prices of its cars in China may have to drop considerably before the company can truly tap into the market.

The strike by 1,900 workers at Honda’s Foshan factory came as a particularly big shock to Honda, which had announced just days before that it would increase production in China to meet demand.

Honda’s chief executive, Takanobu Ito, had said the automaker would begin major expansions at two joint ventures in China, Guangqi Honda and Dongfeng Honda, increasing capacity by 30 percent to 830,000 cars and minivans by 2012.

In April alone, Honda made 58,814 cars in China, a 28.7 percent increase from the same month the previous year and a monthly record.

Five of six Japanese car manufacturers with factories in China broke production records in April.

“The wave of motorization in China will not abate for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Ito said last week. He said that Guangqi Honda would introduce a compact car intended especially for the Chinese market that would be produced there in 2011.

The rise in output in China has been driven by a strong economic recovery in that country, which is buoying auto sales more than in any other major market. The rebound has been good news for Japanese automakers, hard-pressed to cut costs as they seek to return to profit after a collapse in car sales because of the global economic crisis.

Auto sales in Japan have remained sluggish, and sales in the United States and Europe have not rebounded to precrisis levels.

In China, Japanese carmakers are also racing to catch up with rivals after arriving relatively late in the market. The first Honda rolled out of a plant in Guangzhou in 1999, while Toyota did not produce in China until 2002.

Though sales have grown rapidly since then, Japanese carmakers are still struggling against local rivals because of a dearth of small, low-cost models, which are driving market growth in China.

Honda’s least expensive model sold in China, the Fit compact car with a 1.3-liter engine, is priced at about 83,000 renminbi, or about $12,500. A Chery QQ 1.3-liter minicar from the Chinese carmaker Chery Auto sells for about half the price of the Fit.

Given that the average monthly income in China s is 2,050 renminbi, about $300, the price of a Chery QQ is around 19 months’ salary, while the Honda Fit requires more than 40 months. The Honda Accord 2.4-liter sedan, meanwhile, sells in China for about $35,000, far beyond the reach of most workers.

For Honda, the promise of access to a huge, growing market in China was as much a factor as cheaper labor in luring it to open factories there. A 25 percent import tariff on foreign cars is also a major incentive for foreign automakers to produce in China.

More quickly than any other major Japanese automaker, Honda has started exporting cars made in China to third countries. A small plant in Guangdong makes its Jazz model for export.

Besides complaining about their pay, Honda’s striking workers complain about a wage gap: the company’s Japanese employees in China are paid about 50 times what local Chinese workers receive.

Experts say that at the factory level, Japanese companies will need to start changing the way they work with employees — giving them fair pay, benefits and a chance for promotion in line with those accorded to employees from headquarters in Japan.

“Japanese manufacturers need to raise morale by making sure that local staff can also climb within the company,” said Tatsuo Matsumoto, Asia researcher at the Japan Center for International Finance.

May 27 (Bloomberg) — Honda Motor Co. shut down all four of its car plants in China after 1,850 workers at a parts-making unit went on strike demanding a pay raise, crippling production in the world’s biggest auto market.

Honda, Japan’s second-biggest carmaker, closed two plants in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on May 24 and factories in Guangzhou and Wuhan, Hubei province, on May 26, Tomoko Uchida, a spokeswoman for the Tokyo-based company, said by phone today. Workers making transmissions and engine parts at Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co. in Foshan, Guangdong, went on strike May 17, said Zhu Linjie, a Beijing-based spokesman for the carmaker.

While labor unrest has increased in China, Yasuko Matsuura, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman for the carmaker, said the walkout is the first to affect Honda’s production there. Honda, worker representatives and local government officials in Foshan will continue talks to end the strike, the company said.

“China is experiencing a labor shortage that’s shifting the natural bargaining power to workers,” said Chang-Hee Lee, a Beijing-based industrial relations specialist at the International Labor Organization.

Honda will halt production at least until May 29 and plans to make a decision tomorrow about next’s week output, Honda’s Matsuura said. The company isn’t disclosing how many vehicles have been affected.

The employees at the parts plant are demanding monthly pay be boosted to between 2,000 yuan ($293) and 2,500 yuan, from 1,500 yuan, Matsuura said. The workers are requesting they be paid about the same as those at Honda’s car-making factories in China, the company said.

Honda rose 1.2 percent to 2,771 yen in Tokyo, in line with the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average.

Toyota, Nissan

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest carmaker, and Nissan Motor Co. also have plants in Guangdong province. The companies have no labor problems at plants there, they said.

Honda’s sales in China accounted for 17 percent of its global sales last year, the carmaker said. The company’s namesake brand ranked fifth in China by unit sales last month, according to J.D. Power & Associates. Honda may increase China sales 9 percent this year to 630,000 vehicles, Chief Executive Officer Takanobu Ito said last month.

Local government officials in Foshan City’s Shishan county are involved in the talks between workers and the automaker, Honda’s Zhu said. The local government issued a statement a few days ago that said that Honda hadn’t violated China’s rules on workers’ compensation or their working environment, he said.

The strike is continuing and the workers union is complying with labor laws and regulations, its chairman, who identified himself only by his surname, Wu, said when reached by phone today. He declined to comment further.

‘Better Treatment’

“Japanese companies in China tend to provide better treatment than local companies that have no affiliation with foreign companies,” said Satoshi Yuzaki, an auto analyst at Takagi Securities Co. in Tokyo.

Trade unions and employers appear to be reporting a growing number of strikes in China, although there are no official numbers, said the International Labor Organization’s Lee, who has covered the nation’s industrial labor relations since 2000.

Honda’s strike isn’t the first for Japanese companies in China, he said.

Toshiba, Canon

Several thousand Chinese workers at Japanese companies including Toshiba Corp. and Canon Inc. went on strike in 2005 in Dalian, a city on the northeast coast of China, demanding higher pay or better working conditions, Lee said. Two years ago, taxi drivers also refused to work in Chinese cities Chongqing and Shanghai, complaining about competition from unlicensed drivers, he said.

More than 90 percent of companies based in China’s Pearl River Delta region, which includes Guangzhou, reported labor shortages, adding up to about 2 million workers, China’s Southern Metropolis Daily reported in February.

The parts factory, a wholly owned Honda subsidiary, started production in 2007 and makes transmissions for the Accord, City Odyssey and Fit models, according to the company.

Honda plans to raise production capacity in China by 28 percent to 830,000 vehicles a year by the second half of 2012 from 650,000 and introduce two new models as car demand grows in the country, Honda’s Ito said in Guangzhou this week.

BEIJING — A court in Lhasa has given a Tibetan a suspended death sentence for taking part in riots that erupted in the remote Himalayan region two years ago, an overseas Tibetan rights group said.

The Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement late Wednesday that the Lhasa Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Sonam Tsering, 23, to death with a two-year reprieve on Tuesday. Such sentences are usually commuted to life in prison.

It said Sonam Tsering is the seventh Tibetan so far to be sentenced to death for the riots, including two already executed.

Rioting that broke out in Lhasa on March 14, 2008, left 22 people dead and led to the most sustained Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in decades.

Beijing says the demonstrations were part of a violent campaign organized by the Dalai Lama and his supporters to throw off Chinese rule in Tibet and sabotage the Beijing Olympics in August 2008.

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet 50 years ago amid an uprising against Chinese rule, has denied the charge and says he seeks only significant autonomy for Tibet under continued Chinese rule.

The Lhasa court on Tuesday also ordered jail terms of between three and seven years for five other Tibetans convicted of harboring Sonam Tsering in their homes following the riots and helping him prepare to flee abroad, it said. He disappeared after the riots but was arrested 17 months later in October last year, it said.

Sonam Tsering was born in Ganzi, a predominantly Tibetan prefecture in southwest China’s Sichuan province. He made a pilgrimage to Lhasa in 2007, then stayed on, the center said.

The center reported that the Lhasa court heard that he rioted and led others to riot by setting cars and shops on fire and overturning police vehicles. While standing on top of a police vehicle, he wielded a knife in the air and loudly shouted anti-government slogans, it said.

Lhasa government and court officials refused to confirm the ruling and said they had no knowledge of the case.

A female Tibetan staff member who answered the phone at the Communist Party Propaganda Office in Lhasa said she didn’t know about the case. She gave her name as Sola — many Tibetans use just one name.

Two women reached by phone at the Lhasa court said they had not heard about the case. Both refused to give their names.

Schools across China have been ordered to step up security measures after a series of bloody attacks on children and teachers in recent days.

As part of the increased security, armed police were to begin patrolling schools in Beijing after the May Day holiday, officials said.

On Saturday, the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Hao Ping, China’s education vice-minister, as saying that authorities faced a “heavy task” with 270 million students in schools across China.

Hao said the government was setting up a 22-member expert team to focus on “public incidents” in the education system, according to Xinhua.

The crackdown follows an attack on Friday in the city of Weifang in which a farmer broke into a school, attacking children and a teacher with a hammer before setting himself on fire and burning himself to death.

Friday’s attack was the third such incident in three days, and the fifth in the space of just over a month.

Pupils wounded

On Wednesday, a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the southern city of Leizhou, wounding 15 pupils and a teacher with a knife.

The attacker had reportedly been on sick leave from another school since 2006 for mental health problems.

A day later, a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with a 20-centimetre knife wounded 29 young children, as well as two teachers and a security guard at a school in the eastern city of Taixing.

Five of the injured children were reported to be in a serious condition in hospital.

Parents of children at the Taixing school have been protesting outside a city hospital demanding better security measures in response to the attacks.

The attacks have been given little coverage in Chinese state media, in what observers say may reflect a desire to avoid further copy cat attacks, or to avoid overshadowing blanket coverage of the opening of the showpiece Shanghai Expo, a pet government project.

The simmering anger of urban China
ALTERCATIONS between unlicensed street vendors and law-enforcement officers are commonplace in China. Sometimes they escalate into scuffles or riots. But a night-time rampage by hundreds of citizens in the southern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, on March 26th-27th has aroused fresh concerns about a malaise in Chinese cities.

The violence in Kunming reportedly left dozens injured. Ten government vehicles were overturned and some set on fire by crowds enraged by rumours that a vendor had been killed by an officer of Kunming’s “City Administration and Law Enforcement Bureau”. This agency, commonly known by its Chinese abbreviation chengguan, is a junior cousin to the police force. It is responsible for matters such as clearing the streets of illegal pedlars and supervising house demolitions. Chengguan officers are renowned for their thuggish, fine-gouging ways.

The vendor, as it turned out, had not been killed. But the rioters could be forgiven for assuming the worst. In the past couple of years even some state-controlled newspapers have made common cause with critics of chengguan activities across the country. In January 2008 a man in the central province of Hubei was beaten to death when he attempted to film officers trying to stop a protest by villagers against a dump for urban waste. “Another citizen has fallen. When will we stand up and restrain the chengguan system?” wrote a newspaper columnist at the time.

The Chinese press has reported others having fallen to the chengguan since: a pedlar left severely brain-damaged after a mauling in Shanghai last July; a man beaten to death in Beijing in October after being accused of illegally using his motorcycle as a taxi. One case prompted a letter to China’s legislature. A woman in the province of Sichuan died last November after setting herself on fire in protest when officers burst into her home to enforce a demolition order. In response, a group of Beijing law professors wrote proposing tighter controls on demolition procedures.

Protests triggered by chengguan brutality have rattled the authorities, hypersensitive as they are to any urban unrest that might turn against the government. Last May hundreds of university students protested in the eastern city of Nanjing against the alleged beating of a classmate. The following month police rescued several chengguan who were captured by rioters in a town in the southern province of Guangdong. In Kunming last October protesters put the corpse of a pedicab-driver, who had allegedly been killed by chengguan, on a gurney and wheeled it to a chengguan office where they burned paper as a traditional funeral offering (the authorities said he had died naturally). That same month a Shanghai man became famous when he chopped off part of a finger in protest at what he said was an attempt to frame him as an illegal taxi-driver.

The latest flare-up in Kunming has also attracted considerable press attention. One newspaper website described the eruption as symptomatic of public resentment against local officialdom that could blow up like “a bomb at any time”. Another newspaper attacked the Kunming authorities for releasing only bare details and not taking questions at a press briefing on the incident. A third suggested the official version of events, that the vendor had simply fallen over, might be a “lie” (a word even used in the headline). It quoted witnesses saying an officer had pushed over her pedicab, pinning the woman under it. A gas canister had then rolled on top of her, knocking her unconscious.

In recent weeks, a speech on social unrest by a prominent Chinese scholar, Yu Jianrong, has been widely circulated on the internet in China. In it Mr Yu describes the emergence in recent years of a new type of social unrest, which he calls “venting incidents”: brief, unorganised outbursts of public rage against the authorities or the wealthy. China’s efforts to enforce “rigid stability”, he argues, were not sustainable and could result in “massive social catastrophe”. Even government officials, he notes, are giving warning in private of worse to come.

(TibetanReview.net, Mar06, 2010)  Seventy Tibetans have been held from rental houses along Sera Road in Tibet’s capital Lhasa on Mar 2 evening under a “strike hard” campaign launched that morning ahead of the 51st anniversary on Mar 10 of the Tibetan National Uprising Day. Citing Lhasa Evening News (Chinese) Mar 3, Dharamsala-based Tibet Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) Mar 3 said the 70 were held for being without their ID. Security has been greatly strengthened with deployment of additional forces not only in Lhasa but across the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), the report added.

The duration of the campaign has not been mentioned; TCHRD feels that it would continue for months.

TCHRD quoted the Lhasa Evening News report as saying: “The Lhasa City Public Security Bureau (PSB) officials under the order of Lhasa City government, the TAR PSB, TAR Party Committee and Lhasa City Party Committee had carried out the ‘Strike Hard’ Campaign from 9:00PM (Beijing standard time) yesterday across the Tibetan Capital, Lhasa….the campaign was also launched across all seven prefectures under the TAR in order to strike hard according to law against all kinds of criminal activity and to vigorously uphold the social order and stability.”

TCHRD said armed security forces had been deployed at all the strategic locations in Lhasa with setting up of barricades, vehicles entering the city or going out of it being strictly checked, and homes of the Tibetan people as well as guesthouses being searched or raided at random.

The centre sees the campaign as a prelude to large scale arbitrary arrests and detentions ahead of the Mar 10 uprising anniversary.

The current strike is seen as being more intense and widespread than in earlier times under similar circumstances, indicating a more hardline approach to dealing with the situation in Tibet.

BEIJING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) — China’s Ministry of Public Security Tuesday urged police nationwide to take initiatives in cracking serious crime cases and solving social conflicts to ensure a safe World Expo in Shanghai.

Vice Minister Huang Ming said police should seriously crack down on illegal activities, including illegal use of guns and explosives, kidnapping of children and women, gang-related crimes and online pornography.

Police in Shanghai and its neighboring regions were asked to reinforce security measures and increase street patrols, and mobilize local residents to ensure a safe environment for the upcoming World Expo.

Huang said the police should learn from Beijing’s experience of successfully safeguarding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2009.

Police were also asked to visit grassroot level communities and villages to find prominent problems and help relevant authorities settle disputes.

Shanghai’s neighboring provinces, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian, Shandong, Henan and Hubei, would reinforce security checks in air flights and trains, Huang said.

Huang also urged the police to enforce the law in a reasonable and civilized manner and minimize disturbances to the public.

The World Expo, to be hosted by China for the first time, will run from May 1 to Oct. 31. To date, at least 192 countries and 50 international organizations have confirmed their participation in the event that will present the latest advances of architecture and engineering worldwide.

Police say a man who was found dead while in custody “died suddenly while drinking hot water”, the Chongqing Evening News reported today.

Wang Yahui was detained for alleged theft on February 18 in Lushan county, Central China’s Henan province. Three days later, his family was informed that he died in the detention center.

Wang’s family is suspicious of the cause of his death, saying his body suffered multiple injuries. His nipples were cut off and his private parts were also bruised, according to his family.

“(The police told me) He was in good conditions in the detention center but suffered sudden stomach ache when questioned. Then he died,” Wang’s wife reportedly said to local media.

Officials at the local police bureau confirmed the death but said they were not clear how Wang was injured in the detention center.

The four policemen who were involved in the incident are now under the control of local authorities, pending further investigation, the reported added.

China has tightened controls on internet use, requiring anyone who wants to set up a website to meet regulators and produce ID documents.

The technology ministry said the measures were designed to tackle online pornography, but internet activists see it as increased government censorship.

A number of websites are now being registered overseas in an attempt to avoid controls.

China has the world’s biggest online population: more than 380m users.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Tuesday lifted a freeze introduced in December on registration for new individual websites.

Extensive censorship

But the technology ministry said would-be website operators would now have to submit identity cards and photos of themselves, as well as meeting regulators before their sites could be registered.

The freeze had been imposed by the state-sanctioned group which registers domain names, after complaints by state media that not enough was being done to screen websites for pornography.

The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville in Beijing says that despite extensive censorship, the internet remains a surprisingly vibrant and critical environment in China.

Internet users have used it to highlight cases of injustice or to embarrass corrupt officials.

China’s web users often manage to stay one step ahead of government controls, says our correspondent.

The Chinese authorities have launched a number of campaigns against online pornography, with the government saying thousands of people were detained last year alone.

(chinadaily.com.cn) 2010-01-25 15:56
More than 400 people wearing masks and chanting slogans protested outside the proposed site of a garbage burning plant yesterday, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

The sludge-burning power plant, which is being planned to be built in Nanhai district of Foshan city in Guangdong province, has raised public concern over the surrounding environment both in the surrounding district and nearby Gaoming district.

People spontaneously joined the campaign and cried “protect our family, keep away pollution” during the demonstration yesterday.

“If the power plant project is harmful to the environment, we will definitely oppose to it,” Pan Zhiwen, chief of Gaoming district government said prior to the demonstration.

Nanhai district government has started consultation with the Gaoming government and will forward it to higher level administration if an agreement can not be reached, the report said.

Issues with more than 2,000 workers at a Wintek Corp. factory in Suzhou, China, have reportedly been resolved, ending a strike that began last week, ceasing production of parts for Apple products.

Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes reported Thursday that the strike was resolved by Wintek with production unaffected. The company offered bonuses to its employees, which was allegedly enough to get the employees to go back to work.

Wintek made a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange that said the plant’s production and capacity were not harmed by the walkout. Workers of the plant destroyed and vandalized some of the equipment, resulting in 300 riot police being dispatched to the location. Demonstrators grabbed whatever they could nearby and hurled pieces of metal at police who stood in the distance.

Employees went on strike after they said four employees died after exposure to hexane, a toxic chemical used to clean touchscreen panels. Hexane can cause nervous system failure in humans.

Other reports alleged that employees were also upset because of a canceled 2009 bonus, though employees who spoke with the Chinese press said it wasn’t just about money. The Wintek factory is a component supplier for Apple’s iPhone, and this week was pegged as a potential supplier of touch panels for the company’s forthcoming touchscreen tablet.
Like almost every electronics company, Apple works with overseas partners to create and assemble its devices. Last year, an audit of factories Apple contracts with in China showed that more than half were not paying valid overtime rates for those that qualified. In addition, 23 of the 83 surveyed factories weren’t even paying their workers China’s minimum wage.

Wintek, in particular, came under fire in 2009, as workers at the company took their case directly to Apple over what they saw as illegal and abusive working conditions. Members of the National Federation of Independent Trade Unions in Taiwan protested in front of Apple’s Taipei offices last May, hoping the Mac maker would influence Wintek.

21 January
Another 300,000 people are to be moved from their homes near China’s Three Gorges dam, according to state media.

It is unclear if the relocations are directly because of the dam and its reservoir but almost 1.3 million people have already been moved from the area.

The Three Gorges project is expected to produce 100bn kilowatt-hours of electricity a year at full capacity.

The dam is the biggest in the world, and opponents have long criticised its huge human and environmental costs.

Controversial project

Initial reports quoted the China Daily as saying that people were being moved to prevent pollution in the reservoir, and to protect people against hazards like landslides. A Three Gorges spokesman has since denied this.

Hu Jiahai, a deputy of the local people’s congress, told the newspaper: “An eco-screen, or buffer belt, is waiting for approval to be built alongside the reservoir to improve the water quality of the Yangtze River streams and reduce the contamination from residents living nearby.

“Additionally, more people will have to move out of the area to avoid geographic hazards, like landslides,” he added.

He said the exact number who would need to move depended on an assessment of the geology of the area.

But Peng Yehua from China Three Gorges Corporation told the BBC: “These people’s relocation is not a part of the Three Gorges Dam relocation project.”

“This relocation of 300,000 is a decision of the Chongqing government, to move residents from high mountain areas with harsh living conditions into better lands.”

The Three Gorges dam has been controversial from its inception.

It was championed by former Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Officially, the infrastructure project has cost $27.2bn (£16.7m), but others believe the real price could be much higher.

Critics claim it will cause massive environmental destruction, and others say the forced resettlement of nearby villagers has left many without compensation.

Scientists also caused concern when they said the massive weight of the swelling reservoir was causing an increase in seismic activity and landslides in the area.

By Zheng Caixiong and Mo Xuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-21 08:13
GUANGZHOU: At least a dozen people were injured in a clash between villagers and police in northern Guangdong province, in the latest case in the region linked to land disputes.

More than 200 police officers in Yangshan county of Qingyuan, led by Yangcheng township Party secretary Lin Guangqiang, arrived in Huangwu village at about 9:30 am Tuesday to investigate a dispute, a statement from the Yangshan county government said.

Police were reportedly tipped off that villager Huang Qiusheng illegally owned and hid gasoline to make bombs, as well as guns and knives, at home.

However, villagers told local reporters a different story.

Villager Huang Huosheng said the clash broke out after police officers threatened to forcefully clear villagers’ homes to make way for the construction of a key project for Yangshan county.

Only one of the 108 families in the village had agreed to move, and signed a contract to allow the construction of the project, villagers said.

Most of the villagers were dissatisfied with the compensation offered by the relevant government departments.

Police officers sealed off the village at 7 am, Huang said.

At least 10 villagers and several officers were injured in the hour-long conflict, Huang said.

Lin Guangqiang was injured in the conflict also, villagers said.

Two police cars were also reportedly destroyed in the clash.

Police officers used anti-riot weapons and tear gas to disperse the crowd, while villagers used stones and bamboo poles to fight back and defend themselves during the clash, local villagers said.

The conflict was brought under control at about 11 am and police lifted the blockade at about 4 pm.

Chen Tianxiang, a professor from the management school of politics and public affairs under the Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-sen University, told China Daily yesterday that conflicts between farmers and local government departments usually take place only when farmers’ legal interests are compromised, or when the farmers don’t have a channel to express their concerns.

He urged officials to seriously take into account farmers’ concerns when dealing with resettlement and land development issues.

“Relevant government departments should open more channels for farmers to lobby the government for additional assistance and to express their views,” Chen said.

(Xinhua)
HOHHOT: Three men arrested after a massive manhunt for a group of escaped convicts in north China last year have been charged with the murder of a prison guard during the jailbreak, prosecutors said Wednesday. Read more…

Apartment fire kills nine in China
Jan. 6
BEIJING, Jan. 6 (UPI) — A fire in an apartment building Wednesday in Wenzhou city in China’s eastern Zhejiang province killed at least nine people, authorities said. Read more…

December 17
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s rules on the forced demolition of homes are under attack after a Beijing man set fire to himself to protest against confiscation of his family’s home, while legal experts urged reforms to better protect residents. Read more…