Press Release

Prominent labour activist Xiao Yunliang was released from prison on 23 February, only 24 days before his four-year jail sentence ended. 

China Labour Bulletin welcomes the release of Xiao, but the move just 24 days before the end of his sentence suggest there has been no change in the government's attitude towards labour activists in China. "Xiao's released only shortly before his term was completed shows that the Chinese government has not changed its hostile attitude towards workers' organisers in China," said CLB's director Han Dongfang.

Additional evidence of the authorities' insincere treatment of labour activists is the fact that Yao Fuxin is still in prison. Yao, together with Xiao, led around 2,000 workers from Liaoyang Ferroalloy Factory along with a further 15,000 workers from five other factories in Liaoyang in a series of large public demonstrations in March 2002. Yao is serving for a seven-year jail sentence and is not due to be released until March 2009.

Xiao was secretly detained on 20 March 2002 and then formally charged with the crime of "conducting an illegal assembly and demonstration." Subsequently, on account of his alleged involvement in the banned China Democracy Party (CDP), the charge of "subversion" was brought against him. Yao has consistently denied any involvement in the CDP.

"Xiao and Yao were sentenced to jail on subversion charges, although they were only fighting for workers' rights. China claims to be promoting the rule of law and a harmonious and civil society, so it should stop cracking down on workers' organisers," said Han Dongfang.

The workers who took part in demonstrations in Liaoyang City, Liaoning Province, in northeastern China in 2002, were protesting against alleged corruption in the factory - which they argued was a direct cause of its bankruptcy - and calling for unpaid wages and other owed benefits, including pensions, to be paid to the workers. (For further information about the two labour activists, click: The Liaoyang Protest Movement of 2002-03, and the Arrest, Trial and Sentencing of the "Liaoyang Two" [2], The Liaoyang Two: Personal Profiles [3], and A List of Imprisoned Labour Rights Activists in China [4])

Tried at the Liaoyang Intermediate People's Court on 15 January 2003, Xiao was sentenced to four years in prison and was originally due for release in March 2006. Like his fellow prisoner Yao Fuxin, he has been plagued by serious health problems throughout his imprisonment. (See: http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/public/contents/article?revision%5fid=18285&item%5fid=17345 [5])

Cai Chongguo, CLB's Trade Union Education Director, said that Chinese authorities' continued crackdown on the labour movement was due to fears that any labour action in China would result in a movement similar to Poland's Solidarity movement in 1980s.

In fact, Poland's Solidarity movement is different from the current workers' movement in China. At the time of Solidarity's rise, Poland was still operating under a planned economy, and the workers' struggle was directed at the Polish government. Conflicts between capitalist employers and workers did not exist there.

China's current situation is totally different from that of the Solidarity. After more than 20 years of economic reform, there are a large number of privately-held companies and foreign-invested companies in China. In state-owned enterprises, management also enjoy the power to arbitrarily recruit and dismiss workers. The government has been applying laws, policies and tax imposition to indirectly intervene in the economic activities of private and state-owned enterprises. As a result, the owners of private companies and managers of state-owned enterprises have become the only class of people to enjoy the benefits of China's economic development and the contradiction between them and workers has become more acute.

Therefore, the Chinese workers' movement is targeted at the owners of private companies and managers of state-owned enterprises, but not the government. Chinese workers' demands are only related to safeguarding their own economic and social rights.

The Chinese government should realise that it is in a neutral position to act as a mediator to solve labour disputes. Thus, it has no reason to be haunted by Poland's Solidarity movement. It should instead change its current way of handling labour disputes and social unrest by legalising the workers' movement and the allowing the establishment of independent trade unions in China, so that labour disputes can be solved in a more systematic way.

China Labour Bulletin
1 March 2006