Worker Rights

Police broke up one of the largest worker protests in China since 1989 on October 7 in Chongqing, an independent municipality in western China, according to an October 15 report in The Australian. An estimated 10,000 protesters, many of whom were laid off workers from the bankrupt Tegang Chongqing Special Steel Plant, threatened to derail the city government's efforts to successfully host the Asia-Pacific Cities Summit from October 10-14, according to the report. Security officers detained several dozen protesters, including three identified as leaders, according to an October 7 Radio Free Asia report (in Chinese) that also was summarized in English in an October 14 China Labor Bulletin (CLB) report on the incident.

In mid-April, villagers in Huaxi village, Zhejiang province, began to protest the operation of factories that cause devastating pollution in their village. The villagers recently hired a lawyer to represent them in a court case, claiming that the factories were built illegally, according to a report on May 14 in the South China Morning Post (subscription only).

Since the riots ended, police detained a journalist, and the April 20 edition of the South China Morning Post (subscription only) reports that at least one protester, Wang Zhongfa, was arrested and charged with inciting rebellion against the government.

On April 27, 2005, a Chinese court sentenced newspaper editor Shi Tao to 10 years imprisonment for disclosing state secrets for e-mailing notes of an editorial meeting to an organization in New York City. On September 6 Reporters Without Borders noted that the court's decision cited "customer information provided by the Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited" to verify that the e-mail originated from Shi Tao's place of work. Specifically, the decision cited the following:

Labor rights activist Yao Fuxin had a heart attack on August 6 while serving a prison sentence in Lingyuan, Liaoning province, according to a report by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB). Yao and Xiao Yunliang, a fellow worker, joined workers rallying in Liaoyang city, Liaoning province, in March 2002 to campaign for payment of wage arrears and pension benefits.

The State Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission (SERAC) in Qiansu city, Jiangsu province, signed cooperative agreements in July with legal aid centers in 36 cities to provide legal counsel to ethnic migrant workers. The number of minority migrant workers living in Qiansu has risen from 9,500 in the 1980s to over 24,000 today, according to an August 2 State Ethnic Affairs Commission report. More than 3,600 of Qiansu's minority citizens are currently employed in temporary jobs outside of the city and will now be able to seek legal counsel at legal aid centers in any of the 36 partner cities.

As many as 15,000 villagers besieged a pharmaceutical plant and clashed with police at Xinchang, Zhejiang province, in early July to protest environmental degradation to the local water supply caused by leakages at the plant, according to reports in the New York Times (registration required). The villagers said they took action because their efforts to negotiate with plant managers failed and government officials were unwilling to intervene. "This is the only way to solve problems like ours," stated one protestor. Others said that the example of a similar riot earlier in 2005 inspired the Xinchang protest.

Li Yizhong, minister in charge of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), spoke about China's rising number of coal mine accidents at an industrial safety conference held in Beijing on July 15, according to an article in the People's Daily. Li said that 2,672 miners had died during the first six months of 2005, an increase of 3.3 percent from the previous year. He also stressed that safety is a principal responsibility of everyone working at all levels of production. Government concerns about poor safety in coal mines have intensified after two major coal mine accidents that killed 166 miners in Shaanxi province in November 2004 and 214 miners in Liaoning province in February 2005.