China: The New Workers’ Revolt?
August 2003 – 11’25”
Portrait of Mao
Music
00:00
Marching guards
Campbell: Chairman Mao built modern China on a people’s alliance -- workers and peasants taking up arms to fight for a just society. Today in Tiananmen Square that alliance is set in stone.
00:10
Mao’s mausoleum
Opposite Mao’s mausoleum, glorious statues show workers standing with soldiers to fight oppression. It’s a cherished of image of the People’s Republic of China -- a Workers’ State forging a better tomorrow. But many workers now feel they’ve become the enemy.
00:32
Abandoned factories
Music
Campbell: Shenyang in northern China is a city in ruins. Its factories have run out of work. Its workers have run out of hope.
01:00
Wang watches TV
Wang Li came here as a young man to make a future for his family.
01:22
Wang
Wang: When I was young I thought that when I was old and retired I would be well off -- have a happy life.
0:28
Campbell: He can barely believe the place it’s become.
01:36
Wang at window
Wang: I can’t imagine. Today all the young people are laid off. They all stay at home. The company doesn’t pay any salaries -- the workers are being laid off. There’s a polarisation here --yhe poor are too poor, the rich too rich.
01:40
Archival – Mines and factories
Music
01:55
Campbell: Shenyang was once the powerhouse of the Communist Revolution. Workers came from all over the country to build a new China in its factories and furnaces. But when economic reforms began in the late ‘70s, these huge State-owned enterprises were the first to feel the pain.
02:04
Abandoned factory
This factory once employed 20,000 people, but gradually lost its subsidies and buyers. Today, it employs just 200 people, demolishing it for scrap.
02:27
For the past 20 years Shenyang has been dying a slow death. One by one the factories have closed, sacking tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands -- there are now more than a million people in this city out of work. And there is far more pain still to come. This industrial heartland is becoming the graveyard of the workers’ revolution -- and the end of generations of hope.
02:41
Advertisement
03:10
Wang and wife watch TV
Campbell: Wang Li and his wife spend their days in their tiny apartment with their one remaining luxury -- watching advertisements for the new products they will never be able to buy.
Their son, who would not be filmed, has been unemployed for years. There is simply no work here for young people, and nothing for their parents but subsistence pensions.
03:14
Wang
Wang: The people are not satisfied with this society -- with this country.
03:38
People on Liaoyang streets
Campbell: Last year, the neighbouring city of Liaoyang saw some of the biggest labour protests since the revolution. Up to 30,000 people took to the streets every day for three months. A factory closure sparked the protests, but other State workers joined in claiming the bosses were stealing their entitlements.
03:46
Wang
Wang: The leader – if one becomes the leader -- takes money for himself, corrupts and takes everything as his own possessions. The company has no money to buy raw materials. And without tem, the equipment can’t operate. So finally it will have to stop producing and will be forced into bankruptcy.
04:06
Han on air
Campbell: Similar protests have been breaking out all over China.
04:26
Han: I’m from the China Labour Bulletin. My name is Han. We heard that quite a few workers staged an action outside the city government this year in early April.
04:29
Campbell: Han Dong Fang is a labour activist working for Radio Free Asia in Hong Kong. His program gives workers and peasants what mainland media won’t -- a voice.
04:42
Han: Does the Government still take people away?
Caller: They do.
Han: Today there is still arrests?
Caller: Yes.
04:52
Campbell: Today, he’s interviewing some of the 30,000 peasants who surrounded a government building after officials cut their crop prices by a third.
04:57
Han
Super: Han Dong Fang
Labour activist
Han: The Government sent about 500 police officers there to arrest people and that’s made the things blow up.
Campbell: How unusual is this sort of protest in China?
Han: This is very, very common.
05:07
Night street scenes
Campbell: And it’s getting worse. China’s economic reforms are creating a huge gulf between rich and poor. The dictatorship allows no avenue for discontent.
05:21
Protest march
Campbell: This is one of the few large protests that’s ever been filmed. Not workers, but residents of a housing estate demonstrating against a developer who cheated them. It’s a rare glimpse of the authorities’ extraordinary determination to conceal unrest.
05:40
Bus loads of police were sent to this peacefule apolitical protest to stop anyone filming or photographing it. Police even racing off in high-speed pursuit of a camera crew that got away. Every large protest by workers or peasants has been dealt with away from public scrutiny.
06:04
Campbell: The Government sees every such protest as a challenge to its grip on power -- and not surprisingly. About 10 million State workers are losing their jobs every year. That’s on top of more than 100 million peasants out of work in the countryside. The Communists are gambling they can create more jobs in the new economy -- in effect hoping that capitalism will come to their rescue.
06:30
Share market screen
Music
Shenzhen
Campbell: And this is the dream. Shenzhen in southern China is what Shenyang used to be -- the powerhouse of an economic revolution. It was set up as free trade zone in 1978 to copy the success of neighbouring Hong Kong.
07:00
It’s already grown from a fishing village of 30,000 people into a city of seven million. Most are migrant workers who’ve drifted in from depressed industrial towns and poor villages looking for work. They’ve been easy prey for China’s new capitalists.
07:17
Tenement block/Liu walks with Campbell
Liu Quan Yuan: Regarding our wages there’s nothing we can do. We’re being ripped off, and there is nothing we can do.
07:45
Campbell: Liu Quan Yuan has spent 10 years in Shenzhen, along with hundreds of others from his rural village in the province of Sichuan. They live in this concrete slum owned by the construction company that first employed them. The company pays its workers 800 RMB a month -- about US100.
04:54
But Liu says they’re charged even more in rent. At least two families have to share each room to have enough money left over to eat.
08:14
Inside tenement block
Liu: This is where we live. There’s quite a lot of people in this place -- six to seven people in every room. These are the conditions. There’s no other way.
08:24
Campbell: But that’s just the start of their problems. When the company sacked 220 of these workers, it simply refused to hand over the pensions it had withheld from their wages. The workers took the factory to court and won.
08:43
The company appealed and the judges backed the bosses.
Liu and family
Liu: We question the result of the court. What happened to the eight per cent of our wage which was deducted?
09:00
They didn’t use this money on the company. The leaders have “digested” the money.
Workers on balconies
Campbell: The only way workers like this can try to make themselves heard is through protest. The Communist State has banned strikes and independent trade unions.
09:27
Han: This Government doesn’t trust the people, they’re scared of people. They don’t like people to speak out.
Han
More and more workers are in the street in protest, because there is no proper way for them to say anything, to express their unhappiness.
09:43
Police at sporting match
Campbell: Back in Shenyang, the police presence is overwhelming.
09:59
Sporting match
A sporting match is the one time workers can gather en masse. But even here the authorities are taking no chances. Thousands of police mingle with the crowd. Paramilitaries in full riot gear patrol the field flanked by attack dogs.
10:13
Wang
Wang: Not being satisfied doesn’t help. If your words are too hard the country has its own controlling instruments. They will arrest you, or they will do something else against you. The people can only swallow the insult. It doesn’t matter if the people are satisfied or not -- what can they do?
10:40
Military march
Music
10:59
Campbell: But anger is building across the world’s most populous nation. The challenge for the Communists’ new leaders is to show its poor have not been abandoned. China knows only too well the danger of a worker’s revolution.
11:01
Credits
China Workers
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Terry McDonald
Editor: Stuart Miller
August 2003 – 11’25”
Portrait of Mao
Music
00:00
Marching guards
Campbell: Chairman Mao built modern China on a people’s alliance -- workers and peasants taking up arms to fight for a just society. Today in Tiananmen Square that alliance is set in stone.
00:10
Mao’s mausoleum
Opposite Mao’s mausoleum, glorious statues show workers standing with soldiers to fight oppression. It’s a cherished of image of the People’s Republic of China -- a Workers’ State forging a better tomorrow. But many workers now feel they’ve become the enemy.
00:32
Abandoned factories
Music
Campbell: Shenyang in northern China is a city in ruins. Its factories have run out of work. Its workers have run out of hope.
01:00
Wang watches TV
Wang Li came here as a young man to make a future for his family.
01:22
Wang
Wang: When I was young I thought that when I was old and retired I would be well off -- have a happy life.
0:28
Campbell: He can barely believe the place it’s become.
01:36
Wang at window
Wang: I can’t imagine. Today all the young people are laid off. They all stay at home. The company doesn’t pay any salaries -- the workers are being laid off. There’s a polarisation here --yhe poor are too poor, the rich too rich.
01:40
Archival – Mines and factories
Music
01:55
Campbell: Shenyang was once the powerhouse of the Communist Revolution. Workers came from all over the country to build a new China in its factories and furnaces. But when economic reforms began in the late ‘70s, these huge State-owned enterprises were the first to feel the pain.
02:04
Abandoned factory
This factory once employed 20,000 people, but gradually lost its subsidies and buyers. Today, it employs just 200 people, demolishing it for scrap.
02:27
For the past 20 years Shenyang has been dying a slow death. One by one the factories have closed, sacking tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands -- there are now more than a million people in this city out of work. And there is far more pain still to come. This industrial heartland is becoming the graveyard of the workers’ revolution -- and the end of generations of hope.
02:41
Advertisement
03:10
Wang and wife watch TV
Campbell: Wang Li and his wife spend their days in their tiny apartment with their one remaining luxury -- watching advertisements for the new products they will never be able to buy.
Their son, who would not be filmed, has been unemployed for years. There is simply no work here for young people, and nothing for their parents but subsistence pensions.
03:14
Wang
Wang: The people are not satisfied with this society -- with this country.
03:38
People on Liaoyang streets
Campbell: Last year, the neighbouring city of Liaoyang saw some of the biggest labour protests since the revolution. Up to 30,000 people took to the streets every day for three months. A factory closure sparked the protests, but other State workers joined in claiming the bosses were stealing their entitlements.
03:46
Wang
Wang: The leader – if one becomes the leader -- takes money for himself, corrupts and takes everything as his own possessions. The company has no money to buy raw materials. And without tem, the equipment can’t operate. So finally it will have to stop producing and will be forced into bankruptcy.
04:06
Han on air
Campbell: Similar protests have been breaking out all over China.
04:26
Han: I’m from the China Labour Bulletin. My name is Han. We heard that quite a few workers staged an action outside the city government this year in early April.
04:29
Campbell: Han Dong Fang is a labour activist working for Radio Free Asia in Hong Kong. His program gives workers and peasants what mainland media won’t -- a voice.
04:42
Han: Does the Government still take people away?
Caller: They do.
Han: Today there is still arrests?
Caller: Yes.
04:52
Campbell: Today, he’s interviewing some of the 30,000 peasants who surrounded a government building after officials cut their crop prices by a third.
04:57
Han
Super: Han Dong Fang
Labour activist
Han: The Government sent about 500 police officers there to arrest people and that’s made the things blow up.
Campbell: How unusual is this sort of protest in China?
Han: This is very, very common.
05:07
Night street scenes
Campbell: And it’s getting worse. China’s economic reforms are creating a huge gulf between rich and poor. The dictatorship allows no avenue for discontent.
05:21
Protest march
Campbell: This is one of the few large protests that’s ever been filmed. Not workers, but residents of a housing estate demonstrating against a developer who cheated them. It’s a rare glimpse of the authorities’ extraordinary determination to conceal unrest.
05:40
Bus loads of police were sent to this peacefule apolitical protest to stop anyone filming or photographing it. Police even racing off in high-speed pursuit of a camera crew that got away. Every large protest by workers or peasants has been dealt with away from public scrutiny.
06:04
Campbell: The Government sees every such protest as a challenge to its grip on power -- and not surprisingly. About 10 million State workers are losing their jobs every year. That’s on top of more than 100 million peasants out of work in the countryside. The Communists are gambling they can create more jobs in the new economy -- in effect hoping that capitalism will come to their rescue.
06:30
Share market screen
Music
Shenzhen
Campbell: And this is the dream. Shenzhen in southern China is what Shenyang used to be -- the powerhouse of an economic revolution. It was set up as free trade zone in 1978 to copy the success of neighbouring Hong Kong.
07:00
It’s already grown from a fishing village of 30,000 people into a city of seven million. Most are migrant workers who’ve drifted in from depressed industrial towns and poor villages looking for work. They’ve been easy prey for China’s new capitalists.
07:17
Tenement block/Liu walks with Campbell
Liu Quan Yuan: Regarding our wages there’s nothing we can do. We’re being ripped off, and there is nothing we can do.
07:45
Campbell: Liu Quan Yuan has spent 10 years in Shenzhen, along with hundreds of others from his rural village in the province of Sichuan. They live in this concrete slum owned by the construction company that first employed them. The company pays its workers 800 RMB a month -- about US100.
04:54
But Liu says they’re charged even more in rent. At least two families have to share each room to have enough money left over to eat.
08:14
Inside tenement block
Liu: This is where we live. There’s quite a lot of people in this place -- six to seven people in every room. These are the conditions. There’s no other way.
08:24
Campbell: But that’s just the start of their problems. When the company sacked 220 of these workers, it simply refused to hand over the pensions it had withheld from their wages. The workers took the factory to court and won.
08:43
The company appealed and the judges backed the bosses.
Liu and family
Liu: We question the result of the court. What happened to the eight per cent of our wage which was deducted?
09:00
They didn’t use this money on the company. The leaders have “digested” the money.
Workers on balconies
Campbell: The only way workers like this can try to make themselves heard is through protest. The Communist State has banned strikes and independent trade unions.
09:27
Han: This Government doesn’t trust the people, they’re scared of people. They don’t like people to speak out.
Han
More and more workers are in the street in protest, because there is no proper way for them to say anything, to express their unhappiness.
09:43
Police at sporting match
Campbell: Back in Shenyang, the police presence is overwhelming.
09:59
Sporting match
A sporting match is the one time workers can gather en masse. But even here the authorities are taking no chances. Thousands of police mingle with the crowd. Paramilitaries in full riot gear patrol the field flanked by attack dogs.
10:13
Wang
Wang: Not being satisfied doesn’t help. If your words are too hard the country has its own controlling instruments. They will arrest you, or they will do something else against you. The people can only swallow the insult. It doesn’t matter if the people are satisfied or not -- what can they do?
10:40
Military march
Music
10:59
Campbell: But anger is building across the world’s most populous nation. The challenge for the Communists’ new leaders is to show its poor have not been abandoned. China knows only too well the danger of a worker’s revolution.
11:01
Credits
China Workers
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Terry McDonald
Editor: Stuart Miller