"....From the jus' so's ya know Department....":
A factor which will lead to increased LPG use in China...........
Miners' Riot A Symbol of China's New Discontent
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, April 5, 2000; Page A01
YANGJIAZHANGZI, China, April 4 ?? More than 20,000 workers and their families battled with police and soldiers in this northeastern Chinese mining town for three days in late February in one of the most explosive known incidents of urban labor unrest in years, witnesses here said.
Miners were incensed over the loss of their jobs and the alleged corruption of officials who run this rugged region deep in China's rust belt, 250 miles northeast of Beijing. They burned cars, barricaded streets, smashed windows and set oil drums afire in protests that were finally quelled by a detachment of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, the witnesses said.
The eruption in Yangjiazhangzi underscored the challenge facing the Chinese government as it attempts to shut bloated state-owned enterprises, leaving millions of laborers out of work. This challenge will become all the more critical as China prepares to enter the World Trade Organization, a move that will intensify competition as its markets open further to foreign companies.
The riots also illustrated the incendiary role of corruption in China. Several workers interviewed here today said they would not have taken to the streets if they felt the reforms of state-owned industry were being carried out fairly.
"It's so obvious that the leaders are [cheating] us," said Wang Jian, 56, who has worked at the mine since he was 19. "They have sold parts of the mine to their friends. They have sold all the mine's trucks. But we haven't seen this money. There is no open accounting. They eat it and drink it away."
The protests went unreported in the government-controlled media, but word of the conflict recently reached Beijing, and the events were reconstructed today in interviews with a dozen local residents in this community of 30,000 people. The town itself is a bleak landscape of shuttered small businesses. In the center of town, the windows of the mine's main garage had been smashed; a block up the street lay the charred carcass of an automobile.
At a market, men and women were selling goods nobody seemed to want. One man hawked a pile of old shoes. A woman in a ragged sweater had magazines from the early 1980s for sale.
Trouble had been brewing at the Yangjiazhangzi Mine for months. Most parts of the facility, which produced molybdenum and was the mainland's biggest non-ferrous mine, closed in November. Molybdenum is used in the manufacture of rockets, airplanes and X-ray machines because it can withstand high temperatures.
Wang and other workers said they had not been paid since early last year. "There were incidents of hunger in my building," said one worker, surnamed Cui, who refused to allow his full name to be used. "The government did provide some rice and oil to the hungry, but not very much."
In February, mine officials announced a severance package. Workers would be paid $68 for each year worked at the mine, but they would have to contribute to social security and health insurance benefits from that amount. Sixty-eight dollars is a paltry sum even in poverty-stricken northeastern China; a family of three can live on it for a month, but just barely.
Zhang Jianguo, 53, said that he and his wife together had worked 35 years at the mine. They were given $2,380, but by the time they subtracted health insurance and social security costs, they were left with about $500.
"That will last 10 months," said Zhang. "After that, what am I going to do? How are we going to eat?" A local joke says miners who married farmers' daughters are now the happiest of the lot because they can go home and grow vegetables.
According to residents' accounts, thousands of workers massed at the mine headquarters on Feb. 27, demanding to see officials. They did not appear. The mayor showed up, but his speech only infuriated the crowd, which then blocked the gate leading into the headquarters. Workers then began overturning cars and setting them on fire.
One of the workers' main complaints was that control of parts of the mine was transferred to people believed to be friends and relatives of local power brokers. At the mine today, workers said part of it is still functioning but is now run by private individuals who either bought or were given claims to the mine.
"This process was totally opaque," said He Binghan, 42, who still works in one of the pits. "We miners have been working here for China, for the Communist Party since the revolution. And now, suddenly, my part of the mine is private. And no one told me how."
Police responded to the disturbance from Huludao and Jinzhou, two small cities about 30 miles away on the coast of the Bohai Sea. But protesters surrounded their cars and trucks as well, according to local accounts. Heavily armed police were bused in and fired tear gas into the crowd.
As the protests continued, government officials expressed concern that the miners would begin to use the mine's stock of dynamite to fend off security forces. But two days later, Feb. 29, army troops rolled in, fired shots above the crowd and restored order. There were injuries on both sides, but no deaths were reported.
Workers said 20 to 30 miners were arrested on charges of destroying public property. The local Public Security Bureau has plastered posters on walls throughout town, warning residents against spreading rumors, overturning cars, stoning government buildings and torching oil tankers. Officials were unavailable for comment.
The town was placed under a loose curfew, with police standing guard around government offices and the mine. The curfew was lifted at the end of March, residents said, but today scores of police vehicles cruised the two main streets.
The riot in Yangjiazhangzi was severe for a Chinese city but indicative of the public unrest bedeviling the Communist Party, which has ruled China for 51 years. Sit-ins and other demonstrations are routine in bigger cities, sparked by the wrenching reforms of the state-owned sector. The demonstrations are mostly about economic issues and are rarely suppressed by force.
In the countryside, however, authorities appear more willing to order security services to smash protests and fire on demonstrators. Those protests have generally been sparked by local authorities attempting to force farmers to pay randomly imposed fees.
Labor Minister Zhang Zuoji said last month that 11.5 million workers will be jobless at the end of the year as thousands of steel mills, mines, cement plants and machine tool factories close as part of the reforms. Zhang also acknowledged some popular unrest, noting that 500,000 to 600,000 retired workers did not receive pensions on time last year and 600,000 to 700,000 laid-off workers did not receive unemployment insurance.
Those figures are thought to vastly underestimate the seriousness of the problem; the World Bank estimates that of the 140 million workers in the state-owned sector, as many as 35 percent could be fired.
¸ 2000 The Washington Post Company |
