China's jobless find voice (fwd)

[Stephen E Philion <philion@xxxxxxxxxx>]

China's jobless find voice
Richard McGregor reports from Shenyang
Financial Times, Dec. 30


The first time the authorities cut their meagre dole payments, Wang Jun and
thousands of other laid-off workers responded with a sit-down protest at a
busy Shenyang intersection until they were restored.

That was four years ago, and the pattern set in that pioneering protest in
the heart of China's northern rustbelt has been played out more than a
dozen times since.

Confronted by demonstrators, the authorities invariably find the money they
had claimed not to have, and resume welfare payments. The demonstrators
then quietly disperse.

"We don't want to cause trouble, but I don't think that the government is
incapable of giving us money," said Mr Wang, a former timber worker who has
helped organise about five demonstrations a year since 1996.

Once feared as a threat to China's stability, the situation in Shenyang
tells a more subtle story, of how the unemployed, and their daily plight
and sporadic protests, have become as much part of the urban landscape as
the scores of abandoned state-owned factories that line the city streets.

Not everyone without work and welfare has taken to the streets. Some have
sullenly acquiesced to their impoverishment. Others find the new private
economy liberating.

But so far, after nearly a decade of lay-offs, the combustion the
authorities feared among the urban unemployed appears to have been just
kept under control.

The arrival of winter, with its biting sub-zero temperatures, has brought a
temporary halt to Mr Wang's protests.

But in a city with an official jobless rate of about 10 per cent, and a
real one double that, Mr Wang expects the stand-off with the authorities to
resume.

"The police don't dare use force," he said. "With many old and ill people,
someone could easily die, and that would cause all of us to become very
angry."

After being laid off in 1993 from a factory where he had worked for 35
years, he got dole payments of Rmb84 ($10) a month for four years, and
Rmb100 a month for the last three, aside from times when the local
government cried poor and stopped paying. His wife and son are also
unemployed.

He supplements this with work as a nightwatchman for Rmb300 a month, barely
enough for essentials such as heating. He says many in Shenyang go without
warmth in winter, because they cannot afford to repair their broken systems.

Mr Wang's wife, meanwhile, sobs quietly as she tells how she can't afford
the Rmb160 medicine needed to treat an illness which is sending her blind.

"Government officials go overseas on business trips, and spend millions of
yuan without batting an eye - it's outrageous," Mr Wang says. "We are not
asking for anything extra, just enough for the basic necessities."

Mr Wang is not imagining this corruption - a number of top officials,
including the mayor, have lost their jobs in Shenyang for fraud and ties to
organised crime. Just down the road from Mr Wang is the Li family, where
both breadwinners are jobless too. They scrape together a living from a
small grocery store run from their kitchen, and a sewing service from the
living room.

Li Zhaozhong received a payout when the brewery he worked at closed in
1994, but his monthly pension cheques have since dried up.

While he and his wife cannot contemplate any leisure activity, he is
philosophical about life. "This is a transition period," he says, citing a
Chairman Mao saying, "To build, you must first destroy."

At 46, Li doesn't expect to work full-time again, but he thinks his son,
training as a motor mechanic, has better prospects. "I am not optimistic
about my future, but I am optimistic about my son's future. Society is
improving."