There is no dispute about the nature of the regime in China: it is a one-party state where the CPC bureaucracy constitutes a ruling class exercising a monopoly of power enforced by extensive police control and by the repression of dissident opinion and activity. The official trade union structure is consistent with the nature of the regime, and follows the general pattern of Communist countries, where the so-called trade unions are not organisations formed by workers to defend their interests but structures created by the state in order to administer, control and, if need be, repress the work-force.

As is known, there is only one officially recognised trade union center in China: the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Its membership is variously given as 100.4, 103 or 110 million, in 593,113 enterprise branches, of which 46,107 in foreign enterprises.
There is no dispute about its nature as a subsidiary organisation of the Communist Party. A law, passed by the National People’s Congress in 1992, reaffirms the status of the ACFTU and its subordinate structures as a “mass organisation of the working class”, comparable to the two other “mass organisations”, the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF) and the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL). The function of all three organisations is to assist the CPC in carrying out its policies within their respective field of action (workers, women, youth).
Key officials, especially at national and provincial levels, are appointed by the CPC. According to an ACFTU statement of April 15, 1990, “the administration of union cadres by the Party is an unchangeable principle. The ACFTU should work together with the Organisation Department of the Central Committee of the CPC in laying down regulations concerning cadre management and in monitoring the nomination, investigation, election, approval and allocation of union leaders.”
The same document also states:
“trade unions must resolutely oppose any organisation or individual expressing political views countering those of the Party… On discovering the formation of workers’ organisations which oppose the Four Cardinal Principles and endanger the national regime, the trade union must immediately report to same-level party committees and senior-level unions, and must resolutely expose and dissolve them. When necessary, the union should demand the dissolution of such organisations by the government in accordance with the law. Concerning organisations initiated by workers out of their specific economic interests, the union should advise them to dissolve and terminate their activities through persuasion and counselling.”
Workers at enterprise level may form unions, but these must be immediately approved by the ACFTU and become part of its structure.
Officials are frequently interchanged between the ACFTU, the party and the state machinery from the national to the local level. ACFTU president Wei Jian-xing is at the same time a member of the Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission of the CPC, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC and the General Secretary of the Beijing Municipal CPC Committee.
Management and employees both are members of the trade union. This leads to situations like in Shekou (Guangdong) or in Hanyang (Shanxi) where 60 percent of the local branches of unions are chaired by enterprise management. Or to situations where workers submitting a grievance to the local Labour Disputes Arbitration Committee find that their employer is represented by an ACFTU official in his (or her) capacity of management cadre (three such cases are known to this reporter).
Apart from acting as a transmission belt for the CPC (“educational” and propaganda activities), trade unions in China have been responsible for certain welfare activities. They run canteens, nurseries, schools, vocational training programs, sanatoriums and hospitals, entertainment centers, cinemas. Trade union officials in their day-to-day work will allocate housing, visit sick members, secure the payment of medical benefits, sick leave pay and pensions. However, in defending their members on the job (grievances and demands) they have been generally ineffective and powerless.
Because of growing workers’ dissatisfaction, and increasing instances of spontaneous collective action and attempts to create independent unions, the ACFTU has acquired a new and sinister function: assisting the police in identifying and repressing such activity.
The Public Security Bureau (PSB), which is the Chinese political police, last year issued guidelines on maintaining social order which include the following guidelines for the unions:
“Trade unions must emphasise their work on politics and ideology in the work-force as well as propaganda education. Contradictions among employees and labour disputes must also be handled in an efficient manner and the union must assist the enterprise directors and party and government leaders to formulate all necessary measures to promote public security systems. The union must also co-ordinate with the PSB, organise “public order and prevention teams” to protect the internal security and order of the enterprises, as well as social order. Staff and workers should be mobilised to struggle against all forms of criminal and illegal behaviour. The union must also assist the relevant authorities to deal adequately with the education and employment of dismissed employees, workers who have committed errors and those who have completed sentences and been released.”
Also last year, PSB chief Tao Siju, in an internal speech, warned that strikes, collective protests, petitions and demonstrations were seriously disrupting public order and that there had been a corresponding rise in assaults on government and party organisations. Tao stressed that all disturbances, no matter what the cause, were to be handled firmly and that there could be no compromise with people who organised or led any form of collective protest.
There are numerous statements by ACFTU bodies confirming not only the subordination of the ACFTU to the CPC in general, but in particular confirming its obligation to assist the party and the PSB in identifying and repressing any independent workers’ movement.
In that, the function of the ACFTU is no different from any comparable organisation in any other Communist regime (the former USSR, the former Soviet bloc countries and the present regime in Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea). In such regimes, notwithstanding different styles of administration and, in some cases, liberalisation in areas peripheral to the exercise of power, such as cultural activities, religion, foreign travel, etc., the state-controlled trade union organisations have always been kept under close control. Workers’ opposition has been perceived as more dangerous than that of any other group, and rightly so: all popular revolts against the system became serious only with workers’ involvement on a significant scale (GDR 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1980).
In China, workers’ resistance to massive lay-offs, non payment of wages, abuse of workers by management, bad, dangerous and often inhuman working conditions, has been growing. According to official figures, there were 135,000 disputes in 1994, up 59.4 percent from 1993. In SOEs, 26 percent of disputes were over pay and 11.5 percent over workers’ insurance and welfare. In foreign investment enterprises (FIEs), 50.5 percent of disputes were over bad treatment of workers or over contracts. In the first six months of 1995, there were 150,000 disputes of which, according to ACFTU data, 25,000 were strikes involving 450,000 workers.
There are no overall figures available for 1995 and for the last two years, but instances in recent months include:
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A demonstration of about 10,000 people in Mianyang (Sichuan), from the Mianyang Silk Spinning Factory, the Silk Printing and Dyeing Factory, the Soft Wool Knitting Factory and the Weft Knitted Fabric Factory on June 7 last year against embezzlement of funds belonging to the workers and against the deduction by city authorities of CNY60 from workers’ pensions. Several workers were arrested as “ringleaders”, but the Mianyang government has stopped deducting money from the pensions of retired workers. A Sichuan dissident, Li Bifeng, who sent news about the conflict abroad is on the run and being sought by the authorities.
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A sit-down protest by 500 workers from the Chengdu Shoe Factory in Chengdu (Sichuan) on July 17 and 18 demanding a meeting with management about the reported bankruptcy of the enterprise. Management refused to meet with the workers; the police arrived at the scene but refused to intervene; the workers dispersed peacefully when government officials promised to meet with them and answer their questions as soon as possible.
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Dujiangyan (Sichuan): 600 laid-off workers who had resorted to driving three-wheel pedicabs to supplement their incomes surrounded city offices on August 28 and 29 to protest the confiscation of more than 100 vehicles by the police. The city government promised to investigate.
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In Nanhai (Guangdong) on August 24 300 workers (mostly young women) marched approximately 12 miles from the Taiwanese-owned Hong Sheng Shoe Factory to the Nanhai Labour Bureau to demand assistance in obtaining wage arrears. They had not been paid for three months and were owed CNY300,000 in back pay. In Nanhai there had been previous instances of foreign investors delaying payment to workers for three to six months and then disappearing to avoid paying wage bills and local government taxes. In 1995, 360 strikes in Guangdong province were triggered off by arrears in wages and the departure of foreign investors.
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In Wuhan (Hubei) , approximately 1,500 drivers of three-wheel motor vehicles assembled on August 22, and then again on August 25 against banning this form of transport from Wuhan. Most of the demonstrators were laid-off workers or disabled workers unable to find alternative work. On the second day the demonstrators were dispersed by a large contingent of police.
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In Zigong (Sichuan), over 200 workers at the No. 2 Radio Factory went on strike on October 10 and demonstrated in the streets where they were joined by sympathisers and bystanders bringing the total number of demonstrators to over a thousand. Their slogan was “guarantee our right to exist”. They no longer receive the medical care they were entitled to and receive wages as low as CNY50-100 and some have not received even these for over a year.
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On December 8, 300 to 400 laid-off workers from the Anhui No. 1 and No. 2 Textile Plants in Hefei (Anhui) staged a sit-in outside provincial government offices to protest against the loss of their jobs due to a merger of the two plants and to demand new jobs.
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Also in early December, at least 150 retired workers took to the streets in Yibin (Sichuan) demanding to be paid overdue pensions and a similar demonstration, involving several hundred people, took place in Tayuan (Shanxi).
In December it was reported that the party leadership had instructed railway offices in areas with high unemployment rates not to allow large groups of workers to board Peking-bound trains in order to prevent large-scale demonstrations from being held in the capital. Local railroad officials were told that they could call in soldiers and paramilitary police to stop workers from boarding the trains. Also, provincial and municipal authorities have been instructed to prevent jobless workers and their relatives from making trips to Peking to hand in petitions to the party, the government or to the NPC, and all branches of the ACFTU have again been instructed to be on the look-out for “troublemakers” among workers.
In a bid to defuse social protest, the central government announced in December that as from this year local administrations would have to pay matching funds of CNY30-50 for every CNY100 spent by the government on poverty relief. Central poverty relief funds were already increased by CNY1.5 billion in 1997 and tax revenues from stock sales of CNY2.1 billion were used for the same purpose. With approximately 60 million people below the official poverty line and income disparities between enterprise managers and workers now reaching a spread of 1 to 227 or more, not counting additional wealth accumulation through corruption, it is not difficult to understand where some of the workers’ resentment might come from.
Despite the tremendous difficulties and risks involved in illegal organising in a police state, illegal unions keep coming up. Numerous independent unions have been formed by workers and repressed by the authorities since 1989. In 1996, the CPC circulated a warning to its cadres about “anti-government” and “anti-socialist” tendencies in SOEs taking the form of independent organisations. The circular stressed that these unions were especially active in the SOEs where thousands of workers were being laid off. It claimed that since Spring 1996, they had been responsible for hundreds of strikes demanding jobs, higher pay and more decision-making powers for workers.
Here are three examples of attempts to form free trade unions, after the Workers’ Autonomous Federations (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Hebei, Hunan, among other provinces) which were suppressed in 1989:
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in February 1992, an underground group calling itself the “Free Labour Unions of China” was reported to have published a declaration and propaganda material to be distributed among 2,500 factories in Beijing. Most of the key organisers were detained in May 1992, and sixteen of the detainees were tried and sentenced in July 1994. Their leader, Liu Jingsheng, was given a 15-year prison sentence.
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The “League for the Protection of the Rights of Working People in China (LPRWP)”, based in Beijing, was formed in March 1994 with the release of a memorandum and a petition to the National People’s Congress. The LWRWP claimed to have set up a nation-wide network of over 120 organisers. The organisation tried to register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs on March 9, 1994 but its application was refused. Its key leaders, Liu Nianchun, Zhou Guoqiang and Gao Feng have been detained since then. In May 1997 their sentences were extended after they refused to “admit their mistakes”.
Also in 1994, a group of activists tried to form the “Workers’ Federation” in the Shenzen Special Economic Zone (next to Hong Kong). They tried to set up services, such as legal aid, counselling and evening schools for the migrant workers working in the Pearl River Delta region. Most of these workers are employed in the export-processing industries. The group tried to register their bulletin, evening school and legal service center with the local authorities but were refused. In May 1994, four activists of the group, Li Wenming, Kuang Lezhuang, Liao Hetang and Guo Baosheng were detained for publishing the bulletin “Workers’ Forum”. Liao and Kuang were sentenced to “re-education through labour” whereas Li and Guo were sentenced in May 1997 to three and a half years (after spending already nearly three years in detention). They were due to be released in November and December last year.