Labor Pains

"LEATHER BELTS, LEATHER belts, big bargain price!" shouted Chen Zhong, hoisting a fistful of the articles in question on the edge of Ritan Park in Beijing. Chen (not his real name) is one of China's new entrepreneurs -- but hardly by choice. A year ago, he was laid off by the state-owned leather factory where he worked for more than 25 years and was given a stipend of $10.50 a month, less than half his previous salary and not enough to support / his family of four. The leather plant is half shut and bankrupt because it cannot find a market for its shoddy goods.

Factory managers apologized profusely to Chen and gave him some of their stockpiled belts to sell. But when he first tried to find buyers at the park, two inspectors from the Industrial and Commerce Bureau berated him for vending without a license. Chen exploded in frustration. "Go ahead, take me away, arrest me!" he barked. "By tomorrow morning you'll find my wife and children in front of your office. You feed them." The inspectors backed away.

These are hard times for workers in the world's largest officially communist state. The "iron rice bowl" of guaranteed employment has been broken, and in the past year millions of Chinese from the cash-strapped state sector have been fired, laid off or furloughed at half their salaries. In 1993 in Heilongjiang province alone 2 million workers lost their jobs. Millions of others are being exploited by China's new private entrepreneurs -- overworked, physically abused and paid less than the minimum wage. Working conditions are frequently unsafe; the number of workers killed or injured in mine disasters and industrial accidents has risen dramatically. Illegal use of child labor is rampant.

To make matters worse, inflation is galloping along at 20% or more annually, eating away at every worker's livelihood. Says an official in Gansu, a northwest province: "Even cadres like me are beginning to feel the pain, and I earn at least three times as much as an ordinary worker."

The response among laborers has been increasingly militant. Since March a series of wildcat strikes and slowdowns has been reported in Shenyang, Dalian, Chengdu, Shenzhen and other major cities. A particular center of discontent is the northeast, home to many of China's crumbling state-owned industries. According to the China Labor Bulletin, a publication printed in Hong Kong and smuggled to mainland labor dissidents, more than 300 strikes and protests broke out in March and April in the northeast provinces of Anhui, Heilongjiang, Gansu, Liaoning, Shaanxi and Sichuan, some lasting more than 40 days and involving more than 200,000 people. Tens of thousands of unemployed and underemployed workers marched through Heilongjiang province's two largest industrial towns, Harbin and Qiqiha'er, the Bulletin reported. Some demonstrators reportedly committed suicide in front of officials, while others chanted, "We want to survive; we want to eat."