| Singur: Reflection of China | |||
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By: Dr.Dipak Basu January 10, 2007 Views expressed here are author’s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is at the bottom. 
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(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki University, Japan) The incidents in Singur, West Bengal is reflecting a growing tendency of the government to force people to give up their land and houses for the private sector without paying proper compensation. These incidents are the reflection of similar incidents in China in recent years. As India is trying to emulate China the ill effects of Chinese repressive policies on the farmers are also visible in India. It is not so well known, but alongside China’s booming economy has come much strife especially in the countryside. The growing internal unrest has drawn the attention of the world already. The violence, "spontaneous" riots, injuries and deaths is extensive and undeniable. China’s Minister of Public security acknowledged that 2005 had 87,000 "incidents" of unrest involving 15 or more people, which was a 6.5% increase from 2004. This means on any given day, the state has to deal with 240 or more uprisings or incidents of unrest someplace in the country. The number of incidents reported by the Chinese government is increasing too. In 1993, the number was 8,700. It was reported in the Western media that as many as twenty protesting villagers were killed by police over a dispute of the government seizing peasant land for a power plant. Peasants in Dongzhou, Guangdong blocked access to the power plant December 2005 only after years of petitions and peaceful protests had failed to get them promised compensation for their lost lands. Land Seizure for private Capitalists: Land seized from peasants for the sake of development of new industries and infrastructure, reduces their minimal subsistence base, leaving them with what is called "two-mouth" lands that won't feed a family of five, thus forcing members of many households to join China’s 200 million migrants in search of work across the country. Peasants are losing their land to roads, power plants, dams, factories, waste dumps, and housing projects. Compensation for land seizures is minimal and not nearly enough to replace lost subsistence in a rural society without social security, which were abolished along with China’s drive for capitalism. The state has lost much of its legitimacy with the country's majority, and is now challenged by various forms of resistance. Another side of rural unrest stems from the environmental pollution. The country's phenomenal growth has been achieved through ravaging of the rural resource base. An important court case in China gives an example of the people’s struggle against an oppressive state. Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang, who were arrested recently in the city of Liaoyang, played a leading role in organizing workers of China’s collapsing state-run industries. Protesting unpaid and missing wages, official corruption, and factory closures, more than 50,000 former workers from 20 state-run industries took to the streets of Liaoyang, in some of the largest labor protests ever seen in the city. Among them were workers from the Ferroalloy Factory, where Yao and Xiao had been waging a four-year living wage and anti-corruption campaign. After a week of intense demonstrations Yao and Xiao were arrested along with two other Liaoyang labour organizers, Pang Qingxiang and Wang Zhaoming. Yao and Xiao have recently had the more serious “subversion” charges filed against them by the Liaoyang Intermediate Peoples’ Court. The two could now face the death penalty if convicted. The resorting to more serious charges on the part of the Chinese government is clearly aimed at intimidating and stunting the spirited, grassroots labor movement that has been developing in China’s northeast for a number of years. In what has been called the government’s “systematic approach” to dealing with labor protests, minimal concessions to workers are used together with the arrest, intimidation, and cooption of organizers in an overall attempt to crush popular opposition. The seed may have already sprouted, as grassroots labor protests have been occurring across China’s northeast for many years now. Once the site for huge state-run heavy and primary industries, rampant corruption and a shift away from state ownership to capitalist enterprise in China have led steadily to the crumbling of the northeast’s mines and factories, and widespread discontent among workers. In 1994, a strike of 6000 miners at the Jinzhu Shan Coal Mine in May was followed by a similar action by Beijing miners in August. A note in the China Labor Bulletin’s Index for December 1994 notes that a “rise in protests in State-owned Enterprises reflects the lack of respect for workers’ rights”. In subsequent years, large, Labor-based actions have been documented in cities such as Zhejiang, and in Henan and Liaoning provinces. In September 2000, some 5000 workers from the Xiahuayuan mine blocked the Beijing-Baotou highways for days for non-payments of wages and harassments End of Education for Poor Children: The tragedy in China’s countryside signifies the fact that the Beijing bureaucracy has nothing to do with socialism. Over the last two decades, the regime has been rapidly removing any constraints on the capitalist market and the inflow of foreign investment—a process that has led to a deepening social divide and the reintroduction of the most brutal forms of exploitation. Layers of the bureaucracy and their associated capitalist entrepreneurs have made huge fortunes and can afford the best of education for their children. But public education for the vast majority of children has been badly eroded and the lack of funding has forced many schools to hire out their students as cheap labor. The Chinese government once claimed to provide nine years of free education to all children. Since the early 1990s, however, Beijing has ended that guarantee and made provincial governments responsible for funding schools in the rural regions where the bulk of the population still live. The national government's education budget is overwhelmingly used for the wealthier urban areas and especially for higher education. Over one-third of national education funding is allocated to colleges and universities, which are attended by just 0.5 percent of the population. China will spend just 2.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education this year or 21.9 billion Yuan ($2.6 billion)—one of the lowest levels in Asia. By comparison, the average spending on education in so-called developing countries is 4.1 percent of GDP, and 5.3 percent in developed countries. Provincial and local governments have put the burden of education onto parents in the form of school fees and levies. While schools that cater for the children of the political and new business elite have been able to raise funds through political connections and fees, schools in working class neighborhoods and rural areas have found it more difficult. The average fee in a rural school is 300 Yuan, a huge burden when the average rural income is just 2,000 Yuan. Many rural schools employ untrained teachers, as their wages are lower. There are numerous reports in regional Chinese papers of rundown school buildings, shortages of paper and other stationery, and other symptoms of a general crisis in the education system. The Chinese government has directed schools short of funds to raise finances by establishing commercial enterprises—a practice that has become very widespread. In 1996 the official New China News Agency published a story praising what it called “school businesses.” The report boasted that enterprises run by primary and secondary schools had generated $US37 billion from 1991 to 1995, with an annual growth rate of 33.2 percent. It stated that 710,000 primary and secondary schools, or 93 percent of all schools in China had some sort of commercial enterprise. The huge profits, of course, are generated by the cheap labor of children, often carrying out dirty and sometimes dangerous tasks. Chinese schools breed pigs, maintain farms, operate market stalls, sew, clean, or, in at least one area, assemble fireworks. The bulk of the profits do not flow to the students, parents or even the schools but to the various local officials and entrepreneurs involved. Repressive Regime to Promote Private Sector: The police crackdown on the Falun Gong sect has underscored the extreme nervousness of the Chinese bureaucracy confronted with deepening economic and social problems to any form of protest or opposition—even those that do not directly challenge its rule. In both urban and rural areas, there has been a significant rise in protests and strikes over the last few years, which have increasingly been met with heavy-handed police action. Chinese police are continuing to pursue the leaders of a large peasant protest held on January 2006 in the Daolin township of Hunan province. Up to 10,000 peasants took part in the protest at the Daolin government buildings, condemning taxation levels and accusing local officials of corruption. Hundreds of police were called in and attacked the protesters with tear gas and batons. At least one peasant was killed in the ensuing clashes and the leaders forced to flee into surrounding villages and hills. Some 50,000 people live within the jurisdiction of the Daolin township administrative district, scattered in small farming villages. The average income in 1998 was only 1,400 Yuan, ($US170), far below the national average rural income of 2,160 Yuan. The breakup of the collective farms in the early 1980s, and the restoration of market relations and de-facto private ownership of land in the rural areas, has seen an enormous growth in social inequality. A thin social layer generally connected with the government and ruling party bureaucracy, has been able to enrich itself by gaining control of large amounts of land or the contracts to operate businesses. At the same time, tens of millions struggle to survive on plots of land barely able to sustain a family. Large numbers of peasants have been reduced to hired agricultural laborers working for the new land-owning class, or have been forced to take up employment in rapidly expanding rural firms. Millions embarked on a mass internal migration from the countryside to the large industrial cities. The ability of peasant families to supplement farm income has been undermined by a sharp decline in new investment into rural enterprises, layoffs and the shutdown by existing firms. In a final blow, the option of migrating to the cities has been cut off by the record levels of urban unemployment. It is believed that up to 15 million rural immigrants have returned to their villages and towns of origin. According to one estimate, there will soon be 200 million “surplus laborers” in China's rural areas—an effective unemployment rate of 25-30 percent. Conclusion: Industrialization process demands conversions of farmlands into industrial work places. However, in the developed countries, strict environmental laws exist about conversions of land and locations of industries. These countries follow the idea that nature is a capital asset and should be regarded in the same way. Destruction of nature causes environmental disasters, which both China and India ignore. In Japan for example, farmers would receive at least double the current price of their lands plus a house or apartment plus a job in the new establishment or very generous pension to compensate for their loss of asset, income and accommodations. In the former socialist countries like the Soviet Union, farmers would either retain their houses or would get new houses in different areas, they would be retrained to work as industrial workers in the new industry or would be transferred to another agricultural farm without any loss of income or entitlements. Only in a fascist state like China the state would force the farmers to vacate the land without proper compensation in order to promote private capitalists from Taiwan or Hong Kong. India is following the fascist regime of China. Incidents in Singur, Narmada Valley and Orissa, are the results of these inhuman policy. Dr.Dipak Basu
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