When people talk about “bearing a cross,” they usually mean being oppressed, going to jail and suffering physical torment, so it’s surprising to hear a Taiwanese tycoon who lives in luxury and flies in a private plane saying he is “bearing a cross” because some employees at his factories in China have killed themselves. Even if he is as upset as he claims, the phrase is poorly chosen. If those workers could enjoy even 1 percent of the tycoon’s daily comforts, they probably wouldn’t want to jump off roofs.
Living in luxury and bearing crosses — this strange combination highlights how businesses investing in China are entangled in a heartless and contradictory world. On the one hand, these employers provide impoverished Chinese with employment opportunities, while on the other they rely on the Chinese government’s repressive policies to help them exploit the workers and amass great wealth for themselves.
For government and business to connive in bullying workers in a country that continues to call itself “socialist” and “communist” is the scandal of the century. While China’s so-called reforms under the successive leaderships of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) have been carried out in the name of “socialism,” they have created a gap between rich and poor that is wider than that of the US. Whatever social safety net China once had has been stripped away, leaving no relief from exploitation.
While the path taken under Jiang and Hu is essentially capitalist, China lacks the freedom, democracy, legal system and other checks and balances needed to keep an otherwise ruthless capitalist system in check. China lacks independent labor unions, free and fair media and a social welfare system. China’s reforms have deregulated the economy, allowing unbridled exploitation of labor, while the political system remains as rigid as ever. Independent unions are not allowed and there is no right to strike.
When a free market operates under a developed legal framework, the rules of the game are set, ideally, through a democratic process. The path to wealth depends on an individual’s ability, so it is not a sin to be rich. US software tycoon Bill Gates is wealthier than many nations alone, but he uses his wealth for philanthropy. There hasn’t been news of any Microsoft employees being abused to the point that they jump off buildings.
It is different in China, where the law counts for much less. There, you may only get rich if you have special privileges and the right connections. This is as true for overseas investors as it is for those Chinese who have made fortunes through the restructuring of state-owned enterprises.
While the rich get richer, workers live in internment camp-like conditions. Toiling day and night and selling their labor for low pay, there is no way out for them. These are the very conditions that Karl Marx predicted would lead to a workers’ revolution.
The suicides at Foxconn and strikes against low wages at Honda and elsewhere in China show that Chinese workers have had enough. The Chinese government, for its part, does not publicly dare to go on suppressing the workers and protecting employers’ interests. Rather, it is quite happy to shift the blame for exploiting workers onto overseas investors.
By conceding big wage hikes, Foxconn and Honda may be writing a new page in the history of China’s reforms. They are bringing to an end the stage in which China offered ultra-low wages. As these events unfold, Chinese workers are waking up and are now ready to break out of a contradictory system that thrives, at its core, at the expense of their rights.
James Wang is a journalist based in Washington.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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