Workers Protest in Modern China, Part 1

Mia talks with Cornell professor Eli Friedman about the last 30 years of workers protest in China leading up to the current protests.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Dick Bappen here a podcast about it happening
somewhere else, you know. Okay, the theme, the theme of
this show has gone slightly slightly off the rails since
it was first conceived. However, Comma, I do think this
is something that is very important to talk about, which
is getting some more sort of background information and an

(00:26):
understanding of what the history of sort of labor in
general protest is in China as we look at a
certain the sort of current protest wave that is going
on there. And with me to talk about this is
Eli Friedman, who teaches at Cornell University and is the
author of the book The Urbanization of People, The Politics
of Development, Labor, markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City. So, Eli,

(00:48):
welcome to the show. It's good to be here. Yeah.
So I'm excited to talk with you about this UM
partially because I think, Okay, so insofar as you've gotten
sort of mainstream coverage of it, there's been a lot
of focus UM in term in terms of this sort

(01:10):
of current way of protests, there's been a lot of
focus on like the A four paper stuff and people
sort of you know, hanging signs up and as As
the coverage has gone on, there's been a lot less
about the fox Con stuff. There's been a lot less
about the broader trajectory of what protests looked like in

(01:31):
China in the last twenty years, as everyone sort of
like immediately reaches back for their stock tienem in comparisons.
I don't think you're very good. Yeah, yeah, So I
guess I guess we could in some sense start with
genomen because I think this is this is has nothing

(01:52):
really to do with it. But I guess we could
start with why why are the channe in comparisons bad?
And why is everyone still reaching for them thirty years later? Yeah,
I mean there there's maybe a couple of reasons why
so um, the the the unsympathetic take on it is

(02:15):
that you have a lot of people outside of China,
particularly in the United States, who hope for things to
go poorly in China as part of our imperial competition.
And so UH was a bad year for China, whichever
side of of that movement you you were on UH,
and so they believe that it heralds, you know, the

(02:38):
downfall of the Communist Party, and you know, therefore America
can march into the rest of the century without any
real competitors, so that that is a real thing, right UM.
And that I think the somewhat more sympathetic take on
this is that the Chinese government, and particularly under Stigent Ping,

(02:58):
sets a ridicul u lesslie high standard for what qualifies
as social stability. Right. So minor deviations from um absolute
harmony as conceived of by the state, which means, you know,
no street protests, it means relatively little descent online. And
to the extent that you do see forms of collective action,

(03:20):
they remain pretty small scale and fractured UM. And so
when you see deviations from that, that suggests that, well,
they've kind of lost control because they do want to
maintain this, you know, absolute image of placidity UM. And
if we look at the whole sequence of events that
led up to where we are now, I think we

(03:43):
have to trace it back. Well, there's a bunch of things,
but one of them is the setone bridge protest um,
which is just a single person hanging banners off a
bridge in Beijing, UM, and a single person hanging banners
or holding sign in any other big city around the
world does not create that kind of a stir right.

(04:06):
I mean, you know, you're you're in Washington, d C.
Or or you're in Berlin or or Tokyo or whatever.
You know, nobody cares, right, So that but that just
shows a little bit of a crack in the system,
and so then people let their imaginations kind of run wild. Um.
And we're clearly not in a nine situation right now.
It's not inconceivable that it would develop in that way

(04:27):
in the future. Um. At the same time, I don't
think it's particularly likely for for all sorts of reasons.
And we can get into that if you want. Yeah,
I mean one of the things that I think, I
don't know one of the things that I've been looking
at with these protests versus eight nine. I partially it's
just the sort of class composition is just very very different.

(04:51):
Like there are student protests, but it's it's they're like
these these the students now, like are not the nineteen
nine students, Like this is just if this is a
very different sort of like it's it's very different student body.
It's a very different like the class competition that those
people are different. The experience that they've had in the
Chinese system is very different. And then also I think
someone more interestingly is like, it's it's not the same

(05:14):
working class that showed up in because that class doesn't
really exist anymore. And yeah, and I guess that that's
another part of this that I think, I don't know.
There is definitely extent to which these protests are weird
in that it is like it's it's it's it's a
bunch of people in different places who are protesting about

(05:34):
the same thing which hasn't which you know, hasn't really
happened for a long time. But also like I don't know,
there seems to be this reluctance to talk about the
fact that there have been like not in significant protests
in the last thirty years, like especially in the nineties,
there are these huge protests against sort of like the industrialization,
like the destruction of sort of the Chinese welfare system.

(05:56):
And I guess one of the things I'm interested, I
don't know it asking you more about is like there's
there's a kind of dejectory of what urban sort of
protests has looked like and like as as as the
sort of like as the Chinese working classes like increasingly

(06:16):
become a sort of vigrant working class, and so yeah,
I guess we could jump off from there to also
also I guess because that's the other thing is like
Chinese cities are very different now than they were thirty
years ago, which is the thing that is both incredibly
obvious and also like people don't really seem to understand
very well. Yeah, let's see, there's a lot in that question.

(06:40):
Maybe we should circle back around to the question of
the class composition of the students and the workers today
in comparison to nine. But first let's just talk a
little bit about the sequence of labor protests over the past.
And there is a lot of me going to stuff there. Yeah,
I mean, all all really important insights um, each deserving

(07:02):
a little bit of their own attention. So you know,
after nine nine, Uh, there's this big divergence in the
UM in in the opportunities that are afforded to the
two constituent groups that were in Tanneman Square and other
places around China. So you have the students and you
have the workers, right, and there's there's other people, but
like that's the sort of the social backbone of that movement. Uh.

(07:25):
The students basically get this deal with the state, which
is they demand compliance and political acquiescence in exchange for
which they will enjoy a couple of generation, a couple
of decades of unbelievably fast growth. And if you are
graduating with a degree from one of these elite universities

(07:45):
in Beijing or even not super earl universities and in
other cities, there's a pretty good chance that you're going
to experience upwards social mobility, that you'll be able to
buy an apartment that you know, you will feel more
materially secure than was the case for your parents, right UM,
I think that that deal is coming undone right now,
which explains the students that we say out in the street. UM.

(08:06):
But in any event, that that certainly was the case
for for you know, for about thirty years after UM,
or at least you know, twenty five years after after tenement.
The workers who were in the square in nine nine
had almost diametrically opposed social trajectory because immediately thereafter UH
they were subjected to a brutal regime of privatization, of dispossession,

(08:29):
of theft of public property. They were thrown out of
these jobs that they had believed they were going to
have forever. It was called the iron Rice Bowl. Um.
One of the main architects of that was Johnsman, who's
just died. Healen with drewn So I saw. I saw
a great quote where someone was like, this is basically China,
George W. Bush, where everyone's remember again fondly because things
are so bad now, But oh my god, this guy

(08:51):
was awful, Like dying dying right now is maybe the
best thing he ever did. Like yeah, and it really
is a testament to how bad things are now. But
he is I think, um, the most neoliberal anyway of
China's leaders, more so than than dung shopping in some
important ways. Uh. And so you know that old working

(09:12):
class who was told that they were the masters of
the nation, um, you know under Jungs them in front
in the late nineties, they were just they were just
subjected to these real subsistence crises. And in response to that,
actually the largest mobilizations to have happened since nineteen nine
occurred in the late nineties and really the early two thousands.
In some cases, you have these protest movements with many

(09:34):
tens of thousands of people out on the street, resisting privatization,
resisting the theft of their pensions, um and and basically
this you know, private profiteering and theft of public property.
And I think that even the protests that we've seen
in the last a week or two, um are are
still not on the scale of those worker uprisings that

(09:54):
we saw twenty years ago. Yeah, which I guess, you know,
like part part of the reason why we are where
we are now is that those people lost. And I
think that's been one of the other sort of themes
of like Chinese protests is like I mean, I think
like like some some of the local ones like when,
but the large scale ones have kind of just been
like just like really just been getting owned for the

(10:17):
last like twenty really like thirty years. Like it's it's
been kind of a bleak march. And I mean, I
actually I want to circle back around a bit talk
a bit more about the d industrialization, because I think
this is a thing that like really is badly understood,
especially on the left. Um. The other thing I wanted

(10:38):
to talk about in in that is, Okay, so you
have this massive wave of privatization, you have this industrialization,
and can we talk a little bit of also about
how like for the people for the people who held
on and say it on the industries, what the transformations
that happen inside there was like, because I think that's
also like not understood. Well, yeah, so you have two prosessies.

(10:59):
One is um the uh they talked about as as
smashing the iron rice bowl, right, and and that involves
two process. One is just unemployment. And there's been a
lot of um efforts to try to estimate how many
people lost their jobs. It is very hard. Political scientists
named Dirthy Salinger wrote an article called why It's impossible

(11:21):
to know how many unemployed people? There are some something
to that effect. Um, but certainly tons of millions of
people lost lost their jobs and we're just kind of
thrown out into the market. And it's worth remembering that
they were thrown out into the market largely in regions
where the market was not at all dynamic, right, so
in the northeastern part of the country, which did not
have the booming economy of Guangdong Province or you know,
john Su Province or places like that. Um, So, so

(11:43):
there were those people. People also probably know that there
are still a lot of state on enterprises and something
like a quarter to you know, maybe a third of
China's economy is still accounted for by state on enterprises,
but those enterprises have increasingly come to function like capitalist
enterprises at least with respect to two labor relations. They
still receive a lot of subsidies from the state. They

(12:03):
still enjoy um monopolies, right, so that you know, they
don't face competition from other firms, at least domestically UM.
And like monopoly based firms in capitalist countries, they offer
somewhat better UM pay and somewhat better benefits to their
core workforce. Right. So, I mean, if you think of
of GM or four in the middle of the twentieth

(12:24):
century in the United States, or you can think about
Facebook or Google today, you know, these companies that are
also basically enjoy monopoly position. Their core workers enjoy, you know,
somewhat better pay. Right. But the other thing that's happened
is they have increasingly come to be surrounded by a
very large contingent of temporary and flexible workers, right um,

(12:44):
and so in in in many of these state owned firms, UM,
more than fifty of the employees are what they call
in China dispatch workers. Right. They don't enjoy any of
those same benefits, They don't enjoy the same job stabilities um,
and they eat in in response to market fluctuations and profitability.
Those are always the first ones to be let let go, right.

(13:06):
So you know, the fact that they are state owned
I think matters to some extent um, but when, But
it doesn't mean that the old labor regime from you know,
the nineteen seventies has kind of continued unchanged. Like they
are being these firms are being subjected to market pressures
and that's reflected and how they treat labor. Yeah, I
mean that's something that like if if if you, if

(13:26):
you listen to and Ping like actually talk about what's
going on. He just constantly, every every like two speeches
that he gives there is a line about how like
the economy is directed by the market, and like, yeah,
he's very clear about it, and in some ways he's
he's like very reganite, like he's just like, we don't
we don't want what these lazy people just enjoy welfare benefits,

(13:48):
like they believe in the power of the market to
discipline people. There's no question about it. Yeah, And I
guess the other sort of consequence of this is China's
enormous my worker population. And that's definitely another thing I
wanted to talk about, because that was another round of protest.
Appens to two thousands, that's about uh, this giant fight

(14:08):
over household registration that I guess was the last kind
of successful, like really mass protest thing in China. We
talked about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean, there
haven't been the same scale of of collective protests by
migrant workers. But um, you know, just as a little
bit of background, you have the old state state owned

(14:29):
working classes kind of declining or subjected to the market
pressures that we're talking about, and so unrest um in
that sector becomes a little bit less significant over the
course of the two thousands. But that's happening at precisely
at the same time that the working class in the
private firms is increasingly constituted by these rural urban migrant workers.
When they come to the city's they are treated essentially

(14:53):
a second class citizens and don't have guaranteed access to
all kinds of social services healthcare, pensions, education, etcetera. Um,
and so there is a lot of mobilization. I mean,
you know, the the Juko household system, household registration system
still exists and it still has an important role in
structuring people's UM classed experiences. UM, but it's it's a

(15:18):
little bit less coursive than it used to be. So
in two thousand three, there was this famous case UM.
A migrant named Soon You're Gung Um was taken into custody,
as frequently happened, you know at the time, like police
would just ask people for their papers on the street
if they looked suspicious, and they had a thing in
place at the time called custody and repatriation where they

(15:39):
would take you into custody and they would they would
repatriate you back to your village. Right, So very similar
you know to like ice rates against Chinese people. Yeah, yeah,
like they had even this is I think one of
the things about like, insofar as you can make comparisons
between like the Chinese system of the Soviet systems like that,
that's one of the few things that was I think

(16:00):
kind of similar, is that you do have these very
intense into well okay, it's simultaneous that you have these
very intense like internal restrictions on migration, but also very
similar to the U S system. It's like the the
the economy is based on everyone breaking these things, that's right.
Simultaneously it's illegal, yeah, yeah, right, exactly, Like there's no

(16:20):
illegal immigration to the United States, but the economy would
obviously collapse without undocumented workers. And it's exactly the same
in China. Like, you know, they're like, we we know
that these people are here. We know that our economy,
particularly in the coastal cities, is completely dependent on them,
but we're still gonna have cops ask you for your
papers on the street, and if they don't like you,
they can, you know, round you up and send you home.

(16:41):
In this in this particular case back into A thousand
and three, the guy they got, it's like he was
the quote unquote wrong guy because he was actually a
university student and they they detained him and killed him.
And so when this came out and they're like, oh,
they killed a college student. If have they killed a
normal migrant worker, that would be one thing, but he's

(17:03):
a college student. So so that created a big foss
and as a result, you know, they actually got rid
of of thetention and repatriation, which is good, um there,
And so migrant workers today when they're on the streets
in the big cities are are not likely to, you know,
just have cops randomly asked them to see their papers.
But they're still subjected to all kinds of social discrimination
and definitely, um, you know, institutional discrimination. Yeah, so okay,

(17:28):
we're speaking of institutional discrimination. We're going to take an
ad break and then we'll come back and talk about this.
So I enjoy some ads from companies who are probably
benefiting from all of this, and we're back. So okay.

(17:51):
That that's another thing that I do want to sort of,
I guess, use this to push us forward a little bit,
which is that, Okay, this is obviously skipping a lot
of riots until I was eleven, but one of the
big things about the COVID restrictions that I don't think
people understand has been how bad it's been affecting American

(18:12):
workers and the extent to which, you know, because one
of the things about the House of Registration system is like,
as best I can tell, this is this is the
way a lot of like a lot of resources in
terms of like here's how you're getting food haven't being
distributed and if you know, if you're in a place
that's not weird, how the registration is is like, well, okay,
the state's not giving you your food, how are you
going to deal with this stuff? And they're not that

(18:36):
that that that that's been a big thing that like
I don't know, but a lot of this has been
me being upset with the media coverage of these protests
because like people will just say COVID zero and then
not explain what the actual consequences of this are. So, yeah,
I was wondering if you could talk about sort of
specifically how how the lockdowns, especially as lockdowns have gone off,

(19:00):
have been affecting microt workers and then how that's and yeah, okay,
well so we'll start start there before I jump into
a question with seven hundred parts. I mean, I do
think it's really important to understand why people are opposed
to zero COVID, and sometimes for people outside of China,
they think back to the spring of when you know,
in the United States, we had like libertarians with guns

(19:21):
being like in the lockdown, like we want our freedom,
Like it is not that for all sorts of reasons,
um and and the way to get at why it's
different is to understand some of the classed differences that
zero COVID has hasn't tailed, and I should just say
it's been pretty terrible for everybody, including rich people, and
like you know, we can we can feel some sympathy

(19:42):
for them to UM, but but it's had some particularly
nefarious consequences for for migrant workers. This became really clear
in the shang High lockdown. It's also worth noting that
there are three hundred million migrant workers in China. So
this is not like this this is like half the
population of Europe like so many people were talking about here.

(20:03):
It's it's it's almost an America sized population of people
who are not living where their household registration is. And
so the basic thing is, as you were just sort
of saying that when there is a lockdown and you're
a migrant worker, you you kind of don't exist from
the states, or you might exist, but like you might

(20:24):
also be overlooked from the perspective of the state. So
one very concrete way that this UM screwed people over
was in these hard lockdowns, you're not allowed out of
your house and you're dependent on the neighborhood committee, which
is which is connected to the state. It's kind of
the lowest level of the state. You were dependent on
them for the delivery of everything that you need to survive,

(20:45):
right critically food and medicine. Yeah, can up and say
something about this. This is something This is something very
very different than the American lockdowns, which is like, well, okay,
it depends on like it it depends on a on
on like a province of profit spasis. Like I know,
my family was in Mogolia. They like in in Mogolia,
like you you just you like the lockdown isn't like

(21:08):
you don't go to work. The lockdown is you cannot
leave your house like you can. You can say, I
think I think their lockdown, their first one was one
person in their house once a week can leave to
go get groceries. But it's like it's not like yeah,
like it's it's you, Like you physically cannot leave. You
will be if you attempt to leave, you will be
prevented from doing so. And this means that you don't

(21:29):
really have an independent way of like getting food or
like going shopping or yeah, like getting I don't know,
like toilet paper, Like yeah, toilet resonates with with Americans
in our in our toilet paper shortage of I mean
in some cases, like people would actually just be literally
chained into their apartments, right, So like, this is not

(21:50):
whatever people in in in the U s. Or even
even in parts of Western Europe, you know, where the
lockdowns were a little bit more intensely policed. Like it
is not. It is a qualitatively different thing. And so yeah,
you're completely dependent on the state. So therefore it's really
really important that the state know that you are there
and that the state feels itself to be tasked with

(22:11):
your survival and if you're a migrant worker. So so
one of the very concrete ways that this effective migrant
workers is that a lot of them live in informal housing,
even in the biggest cities, even in place like Shanghai
and Beijing, because those are the only places that they
can live as far as the state's concerned. Like that
informal housing might not exist, there are very very frequently

(22:32):
more people living in those dwellings than are sort of
legally accounted for. So you know, like there's ten people
living in an apartment that's supposed to be for for
you know, a family of three, and so they deliver
three people's worth of food, but there's actually ten people
living there. That's a subsistence crisis, right. Um, you know,
the medical stuff is just is like astonishing and very harrowing.

(22:53):
I mean, you know, just people just dying in their
apartment because like they can't get insolent or I know,
I know people who's family died because they had cancer
and they couldn't get treatment for it because yeah, yeah,
like it's disaster. Yeah. So so that's that's the situation.
That's one of the problems with them for the migrant workers.
And then in the very intense lockdowns at least in

(23:15):
Shanghai back in in the spring of this year. Um,
you know, they also can't leave. So like one option
would be like okay, will you go back to the
place where you do have your household registration, you know,
back in the village and you have a piece of land,
and like you can survive. They couldn't leave, right, There's
no transportation, um, and so they were trapped in this
situation where they couldn't work, the government wasn't you know,

(23:38):
delivering them food, and they couldn't go to some place
some other place where they could get food. And so
you know, there's been a lot of attention to these
recent protests, which are extremely important and qualitatively different. But
even back in in April, we saw food riots, like
in Shanghai, a group of group of migrant workers just
like requisitions like a truck full of cabbage, you know,
and just started like tossing cabbages to people on the

(24:00):
street because people were like literally starving. So I mean, yeah,
so there's a real problem for the microt workers. And
on that note, this has been It Could Happen Here.
Join us tomorrow for part two of this episode. We'll
be talking more about lockdown, similar problems with workers and
this all going. It Could Happen Here as a production

(24:25):
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