[Marxism] Learning about China from media accounts

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wang Hui represents a distinct cut above the "No!No!No!" approach 
which is all too frequently presented by some of the Marxmailistas.

Similarly, Anita Chan's most interesting report on China's trade unions 
contains this significant element, also not the kind we normally read 
on Marxmail, but a hopeful sign nevertheless:

The ACFTU is not the monolithic structure it is often portrayed to
be. There are union officials and local unions who understand the
principles of organizing and are willing to push the limits. But they
are constrained by pro-capital forces within the Communist Party, 
the government and the ACFTU on the one hand, and domestic and
international anti-union forces on the other. The ACFTUâs
confrontation with Wal-Mart has opened up a means for reformers to
operate in future, and has set a precedent for Chinese workers to
take on their employers and to demand union branches. In past years,
many workers in foreign-funded and private firms have lacked support
from the union federation. Sometimes they have engaged in wildcat
strikes or taken to the streets to demand their rights. Very seldom
has it been envisioned that they could use legally-sanctioned means
to set up their own union branches, or that they might be given an
opportunity to work within the space provided by the ACFTU structure.
This might or might not come to pass. It will depend on whether 
a new union branch is organized in a way that enables it to be
representative of workersâas might conceivably have been the case
with the first five Wal-Mart union branchesâor, alternatively,
whether the ACFTU reverts to the practice that union branches in
future are again always to be imposed top-down, through prior
management-union agreement, and dominated in their operations by a
management/union alliance. In short, Chinese unionism possibly stands
at a crossroads, and it is not clear what the future portends.

Chinese labor laws are the fulcrum around which the discourse on
industrial relations is anchored. The laws are the tools used by all
sides to argue their positions. Wal-Mart used the Chinese trade union
law to refuse to let the ACFTU set up unions; and the ACFTU in turn
used the procedures stated in the law to set up union branches. In
recent years, workers too have become accustomed to use the law to
fight for rights, demand justice and compensation, as seen in a
rapidly mounting number of court cases. According to the clauses of
the Chinese labor law, setting up a trade union branch and getting
recognition for it is, legally speaking, as easy as ABC (in stark
comparison to, say, the procedures set down in the US laws). 
Given the desire by Chinaâs unions to expand membership, if groups of
Chinese workers in the coming years use this method to set up trade
unions branches and then affiliate them to the ACFTU, it might well
provide the workforce with a voice. Under Chinaâs labor law and the
present political situation, they may find this politically feasible
and more productive than fighting to set up autonomous trade unions
as advocated by China Labor Bulletin and some Western trade unions
that call on China to permit autonomous trade unions.
FULL:
http://www.japanfocus.org/products/topdf/2217

Frank Joyce's Alternet report on Vietnam, which contrasts that
country's government and its attitude toward Vietnamese unions
to that of the Chinese government, adds more to our ability to
understand these unfolding processes. He commented this way

"I think a better world is possible. A better world is necessary. 
A better world is already happening. Who knows, maybe a 
hundred years from now the statues will be of Arundhati Roy, 
Karl Marx, Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro and Nong Duc Manh 
(the Viet Nam Party general secretary)."

SOURCE:
Socialism Is Alive and Well ... in Vietnam
By Frank Joyce, AlterNet
Posted on October 11, 2006, Printed on October 14, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/42826/

We've also seen posted a Guardian item about a woman in China
who became a billionaire. The Chinese Revolution's accomplishments
regarding women are recounted and assessed rather favorably:

"In 1949 female illiteracy in rural China was 99 per cent. In 1976
when Mao died it was 45 per cent and today it is 13 per cent. One of
Mao's first acts was to give women the same rights in divorce as men,
and for all his other barbarism he consistently championed the
equality of women.

"China is still a sexist society, but compared with the rest of Asia
it is light years ahead. Female illiteracy in rural India, for
example, is still 55 per cent. The change has gone deep into the
marrow of Chinese society. One survey recently revealed that Chinese
girls between 16 and 19 name becoming president, chief executive or
senior manager of a company as their top career choices; Japanese
girls between 16 and 19 say they want to become housewives, flight
attendants or child-care workers. One of China's most formidable
economic and social resources has become its women."

I wondered what her gender, which was the article's hook, had to do
with her accomplishment, and it seemed it had nothing whatsoever to
do with it, however, one quite notable comment should draw everyone's
interest since it contradicts the widely held conviction, among some
Marxmailistas: 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"The extent of China's reform, and its subsequent growth, is stunning. 
It is also true that Ms Zhang could not have made her money if China 
had not opened to the world. But nobody should believe that somehow 
her fortune means that China has made the full transition to capitalism."

SOURCE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1922819,00.html
Thanks to Mao, Zhang Yin's a billionaire
The revolutionary leader transformed women's 
lives, but China still has a long way to go

Will Hutton
Sunday October 15, 2006
The Observer
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

For these reasons, and others, I suggested that those seriously
interested in Chinese developments out to to to China and report
on them for an international audience, as Anita Chan and Frank
Joyce have done. It's necessary to read the capitalist press like
the NYT, WSJ, ECONOMIST and others. It's also both necessary
and useful to read XINHUA and PRENSA LATINA to see how these
media are looking at social developments. But nothing substitutes
for going to the place and seeing and hearing with ones own eyes
and ears. Those aren't foolproof, either, of course. We have to go
and we have to bring what we've known and learned when we go.


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
=======================================
PANKAJ MISRHRA wrote:
When I met with Wang Hui for the last time, he dismissed any claims
about increased New Left influence over the regime. âWhat we have
tried to do is create an intellectual situation in which new policies
can be explored,â he said. âI know that many leaders read Wen
Tiejunâs article; they also read Cuiâs article on property rights.
There have been other articles in Dushu that have been equally
influential, and I am pleased about this. But we have no other
connection with the regime.â

Wang also seems to have no anxiety that ideological convergence 
with the regime will turn New Left intellectuals into pro-government
policy wonks and hacks, part of an old Chinese tradition of
intellectuals advising the state. âWe look at things from a Chinese
perspective naturally, but we also try to think beyond the framework
of the nation-state,â he said. âPeople ask in the West, How could
China develop capitalism with an authoritarian state? But thatâs
ignoring how modern capitalism grew in the West, without much
democracy and with the help of imperialism and colonialism. You have
to ask whether this unique economic model of the West can be
globalized without great wars and destruction of the environment.
This is not an abstract issue. China has stopped felling its forests,
most of which have disappeared, but some country still has to produce
wood for Chinese consumption.â

At our last meeting, Wang also spoke more about a subject Cui had
brought up with me: how the rise of China and India throws up new
challenges and possibilities with profound implications for the world
at large. âWestern societies have been on top for the last two
centuries and shaped the world with the decisions they made,â he
said. âChina and India will now play equally crucial roles in the new
century. But what will they be? I think it is very important for
Chinese and Indian intellectuals not just to imitate the West. They
have to explore alternatives to the Western model of modernity.
Otherwise, the âconsumer nationalistsâ are already saying, âAmerica
was on top; now we are on top.ââ

Wang laughed, and added, âThis is not interesting.â
FULL:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2006-October/004982.html




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