October Themes: Mass Politics in China

Discussion of China in the mainstream Western media is often carried on as if the country were a totalitarian monolith, with vast armies of workers in indistinguishable blue overalls assembling every morning to sing "The East is Red" before going off to earn the forex that secures the iron grip of PLA generals and sinister Mao-suited bureaucrats on world trade. Our elected leaders pitch more or less sophisticated stories of Yellow Peril; and for the pundit class, "China" is an explanation for more or less any outlandish claim one cares to make -- and it has built not a few careers, and not only at the NYT editorial page.

But there is likely nowhere on Earth where the path forwards is less clear, more up for grabs; likely nowhere where the political constellation is more uncertain. That the June Fourth Movement's (六四运动) demands for democratization were never satisfied -- that they were put down, violently, and against the principled opposition of a host of loyal and high-ranking CCP cadres, in Tiananmen Square almost twenty years ago, in an incident of which many young people in China are unaware -- did not mean that popular politics in China came to an end. What we have little considered is that the forms politics has taken since in that country might not be regressions -- stages on the pilgrim's path to the New Jerusalem of plebiscitary democracy and market capitalism -- but new forms with lessons for all of our futures.


Internal migration and urbanization

The China of "manufactured landscapes," the object of a newly refined appreciation for the sublimity of mass production, whence, in the popular imagination, come cheap plastic toys and carbon emissions, obscures another, less titillating reality: the half of the Chinese population (perhaps 700mn people) that lives on farms in the countryside.

China has a system of household registration (hukou 户口) and internal passports which leads to an overstated official number for rural residents; 100mn or more have moved from farms to the coastal cities since Deng Xiaoping's (邓小平) reforms in the early 80s eliminated the "iron rice bowl" (tiefanwan 铁饭碗). It is an old story (the more scholarly and nostalgic CCP cadres are surely familiar with Marx's concept of the "relative surplus population"): persistent underemployment in the agricultural sector driven by the relatively lower productivity of outdated farming techniques and competition from imported and industrially produced agricultural goods leads to a large, stagnant population that moves to cities to look for temporary or permanent work.

But registering internal migrants as rural residents gives the police forces the means to directly intervene in the domestic labor market. Under a system of internal passports, migrant workers whose status isn't regularized are an especially vulnerable (and exploitable) population: the threat of harassment can be used to keep wages down and keep workers from organizing (the state-run unions have an official monopoly on worker organization; neither domestic factory owners nor foreign investors nor the state look kindly on wildcat organization). Thus China's "black jails," illegal detention facilities in which recalcitrant migrant workers are held (1 2 3). And fear of police pressure helped drive migrant workers out of Beijing for the Olympics.

The problem of moving from a predominantly rural, peasant population, to a predominantly urban, worker population is not unique to China -- India is plagued by a rural problem on about the same scale -- and as the world urbanizes, the shadow of mass underemployment or unemployment has led some to warn of a "planet of slums." But it's important not to fall into an easy story in which it is the destiny of premodern farming populations to become city-dwelling industrial workers.

China's contemporary peasant population is the product of determined state policy: first, immediately after the revolution, a policy of redistribution which gave farming families title to land that previously belonged to landlords (the conversion of serfs and sharecroppers into small peasants); second, a series of experiments with collectivization and mechanization on ever-larger scales, including the consolidation of large state-run enterprises employing agricultural wage labor; and third, in the period since Deng, a gradual shift to a mixed economy in agricultural goods, with more and more reliance on prices and markets to organize production. But, as with all such gradual measures, the less-regulated and more enterprising (indeed not infrequently criminally so) have benefited disproportionately. In a cruel irony, the CCP once so concerned with discriminating between the various strata in the countryside (in order to mobilize the population to work for egalitarianism) has become the midwife of their rebirth. Meanwhile, the poorest farmers, left on the land with no prospects, often elderly and unskilled, are the most exposed to the viscissitudes of inflation and the most at risk from the environmental consequences of China's rapid industrialization.


Unemployment and discontent

Those whose luck, skill, or political connections have not been sufficient to assure prosperity -- and, whether still in the countryside or floating through the cities, they number in the tens or hundreds of millions -- have come to constitute a political tinderbox. The number and intensity of "mass incidents" (群体性事件) in China is at best difficult to ascertain, but runs at least into the tens of thousands yearly. But pictures and reports of incidents -- sparked by perceived wrongdoing on the part of government, by wrongful deaths, by rumors -- spread over the internet (here are some examples) and can balloon into larger problems for government. After the Dalai Lama's visit to France earlier this year, a spontaneous anti-Carrefour movement flamed up all over the country. China's minister of public security, Meng Jianzhu (孟建柱), recently warned in a CCP journal that police must avoid inflaming protests and riots.

Organized opposition to government in China has so far been successfully defused and deflected into the courts or managed on a purely local and contingent basis (sometimes with spectacular moves by the central government -- it isn't unheard of for corrupt local government officials to be executed when peasants' complaints are finally brought to central authority). But the Chinese economy has not yet faced a real shakedown. How a shock which left even a fraction of the internal migrant unemployed might affect working-class politics - and reveal the hidden fragilities of industries run by cronyism, corruption, and party privilege -- is an open question. Beijing fears nothing more than the possibility such a shock might be in the offing -- and lead to the formation of new alliances of the dispossessed.

On October 18th, three thousand laid-off migrant workers demonstrated outside the gates of a factory in Dongguan (东莞) in the Pearl River Delta, whose owners had fled to Hong Kong, leaving back wages unpaid: to defuse the situation, city government had to step in to pay back wages. It is not an isolated case. A Pearl River Delta chamber of commerce has estimated one in nine of the region's factories will close before the Chinese New Year, perhaps destroying 2.5mn jobs. So far the damage is mostly limited to export-oriented industries (toys, clothes) -- but domestic demand looks set to slow in line with exports, even as Chinese and foreign economists furiously debate the true dependence of the Chinese economy on exports.

Chinese GDP growth slowed to 9% YoY in Q3 -- which may seem like a high class problem, if growth above 8% were not crucial in order for the government to meet its job creation targets. In a very public (and politically significant) medium, Premier Wen Jiabao (温家宝) has warned of the danger posed by slowing domestic growth. Nouriel Roubini has said a "hard landing" in China may be in the offing, with growth at 6% or lower; Brad Setser makes many of the same points, in a slightly less apocalyptic vein. It seems ever more likely that China is entering a manufacturing recession.


Land tenure reform and transition

It is against this background that the Third Plenum of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Chinese People's Congress met to discuss rural land reform. Reports on the reform decision are cryptic in any language -- the CCP continues to conduct its business in an elaborate, euphemistic jargon that must be carefully parsed by experts -- but it is clear that the essence of the plenum's decision was to reiterate the rights of farmers to lease or transfer rights to their land. Xinhua's coverage of the decision cited approved Party experts saying the goal of the reform was to increase the flow of capital to the countryside and to accelerate the transformation of farmers into urban residents.

Danwei -- keen observers of the Chinese media scene -- call them "decisions," with quotation marks. It's not clear, after all, that the rights given to farmers actually extend beyond those assured by the 2007 property rights law.

Danwei translate an interview with Yu Jianrong in the Southern Metropolis Weekly: he says the true weight of the reforms is symbolic. And not as a symbol of farmers' rights to sell their land: but of their right not to be bullied into transferring their rights. (Outright "sale" of land is not yet legal in the PRC.)

So a strong signal from central government that it has its eyes on the problems of the rural-to-urban transition and will step in to protect farmers -- often from local governments trying illegally to seize their lands. But we can be excused for our skepticism: will any quantity of good intentions provide jobs for ex-farmers once they move to the coastal cities, or keep them on the land if there is a major shock to the Chinese economy? And such a shock looks to be in the offing.


Further reading

Amnesty International published a searing report on the consequences of the hukou system in 2007.

The International Food Policy Research Institute has published a comparative study of Indian and Chinese agricultural reforms.

Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, two Chinese journalists, published a report on the state of China's peasants, translated as Will The Boat Sink The Water? and banned in China. Check out this excellent interview with the authors and Yang Lian's review in New Left Review.

Leslie Chang's new book Factory Girls (here is an excerpt) gives an unvarnished look at the lives of migrant workers in manufacturing.

Elizabeth C. Economy's The River Runs Black is the authoritative English-language monograph on the environmental consequences of Chinese industrialization.

The inimitable Danwei rounds up its "model workers" -- the best China blogs in English and Chinese

ChinaSmack translates posts and comments from the Chinese Internet, giving English speakers a taste of its diversity and vibrancy -- for instance, Suqian city's party secretary blogging about migrant laborers.

October Themes: Zimbabwe in Turmoil

Civil society in Zimbabwe has been in chaos since the run-up to the elections earlier this year. Despite widespread abuses, ballot box-stuffing, forcible intimidation of likely voters, and outright violence on the part of some cadres of Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC for the first time won the popular vote. Unfortunately, his margin of victory was not large enough to prevent a run-off election, from which, after thousands of MDC supporters were brutalized and Tsvangirai himself was arrested several times, he withdrew to prevent further harm to his supporters. Mugabe won the run-off, unsurprisingly, but the MDC retained the parliamentary majority it had won in the first round of elections, leading to a standoff.

On September 15, a vague and nebulous power-sharing agreement was brokered between the MDC and Zanu-PF. Deadlock over this agreement had dominated the news for the past month, as the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates.


Cabinet posts

The controversy has centered around the allocation of ministerial positions. Under the agreement, the MDC would control the right to 13 seats on the cabinet directly, with three reserved for an MDC splinter faction led by Arthur Mutambara. Mugabe is alloted 15 of the 31 ministerial positions by the text of the agreement, but he has unilaterally claimed every substantial ministry, including the home office (which controls the police), justice, and finance. As a result, the MDC have broken off talks several times, saying, "We will end up in but out of government."

Several times the MDC has broken off talks, after the two parties were “worlds apart” on the allocation of ministries. After one of these incidents, Tsvangirai gave this hopeful speech.

Most sensible draft power-sharing proposals that have been made public have allocated the key ministries between the two parties. In one, the MDC would receive finance and the home office, and Zanu-PF would retain defense. But proposals have been vexed by allegations that various parties have misrepresented their terms, and anyway have faced a more serious problem.


The military and the police

The police are the greatest barrier to the power-sharing agreement. If the MDC were to achieve control of either the home office or the justice ministry, it would be able to prosecute police officers for past atrocities, including the systematic beating, intimidation, and murder of the MDC’s civilian supporters. Naturally, the police are against this.

Similarly, military hardliners who have supported Mugabe for all these years fear retribution for their past crimes. The military organized the pre-runoff violence, and fears over the repercussions of their brutality have led the generals to petition Mugabe to ensure their safety. Some generals have called for Mugabe to form a government without the MDC and have threatened Tsvangirai’s safety. One general said that only one option remained for the country with Tsvangirai: “Take action.”


Thabo Mbeki and the SADC

Thabo Mbeki, pushed out of office in his native South Afirca, has been appointed to lead the South African Development Community’s attempts to negotiate a successful end to the power-sharing agreement. In a characteristically helpful moves, he closed the borders of South Africa to Zimbabwean refugees on September 28/29, reasoning that since he had stepped in to negotiate, there was no longer a situation in Zimbabwe that necessitated the extension of the right to asylum.

Mbeki has been widely accused of partiality in the negotiations, as he has historically favored Mugabe's government. Apparently, one of the first proposals he put forth after he joined talks was substantively identical to Mugabe’s unilateral self-allocation of the proposals. As a result, the MDC has called for the UN and African Union to intervene if the SADC and Mbeki continue to fail to resolve the situation.


The passport fiasco

Under international pressure to do something, the SADC called a regional summit in Swaziland -- and Mugabe's government denied Morgan Tsvangirai the passport he would have needed to travel through South Africa to the summit. The talks have since been rescheduled, but this show of utter contempt on Mugabe's part has begun to stimulate international diapproval. Ian Khama of Botswana, a long-time opponent of Mugabe's, has broken with the SADC and denounced Mugabe’s actions, calling for new elections in Zimbabwe. The MDC has said it will call for new elections if the talks fail to proceed.

Kgalema Molanthe, the new president of South Africa, asked the MDC not to boycott the talks after they were rescheduled. The MDC entered preliminary talks in Harare vowing to take a hard line and demand a fair division of power. The SADC claimed a certain measure of progress in the negotiations, but the MDC denounced these statements as misleading propaganda. Mbeki’s participation is now being recognized on all sides as a failure; and the farce has reached the heights of banning journalists from covering the talks for fear they would be destabilized.

After the failure of these early talks to resolve outstanding issues, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon publicly slammed Mugabe, accusing him of insincerity and the SADC of weakness and incompetence. This was another important public salvo in the anti-Mugabe fight. Tsvangirai has consented to attending the full summit of the SADC on Sunday for more talks.


The people starve

At the time of the elections the populace was on the brink of famine. According to Tsvangirai, food agencies were already feeding 4 million people, with the number set to rise to 5.5 million by early 2009. In the beginning of the month the UN World Food Program was calling for $140mn in extra funding to deal with the unfolding crisis, even with the Red Cross and other agencies intensifying their efforts to deliver food.

This article presented the real plight of a Zimbabwean farmer trying to plant his fields in the midst of the troubles. The systematic destruction of farmland undertaken by Mugabe in the early part of the decade, combined with the reallocation of farmland from white farmers to inexperienced black farmers to get votes -- not to mention the kleptocratic consolidation of large new estates owned by members of government-- had already eliminated any surplus capacity in this fertile country. The people of lush Zimbabwe now depend on food aid and remittances from abroad for basic subsistence. And the Zanu-PF apparatus is tightening its noose: the military has taken control of the distribution of basic agricultural inputs, like seed.

The deadlock over government has dovetailed with the unfolding fiscal catastrophe to make famine a reality. On Monday we suggested Zimbabwe's experience this decade would likely replace Weimar Germany as the new locus classicus for studies of hyperinflation. Paper currency is worthless; aid agencies find their available foreign exchange reserves confiscated (perhaps stolen is a better term) for government uses and corruption, instead of being spent on feeding Zimbabweans.

Zimbabweans are limited in the amount of cash they can withdraw from banks in a given week, but with inflation running at hundreds of billions of percent per annum, this amount is constantly revised upwards. Just before each increase in the withdrawal limit, poor families find themselves unable to eat, to send their children to schools, or to clothe themselves. The education system, once sub-Saharan Africa’s finest, has fallen to pieces. Cholera has broken out in Harare. Illegal mining is poisoning the country's rivers. Ordinary people are relying on wild foods to support themselves. Children are hit the hardest.

The cash withdrawal limit for enterprises is lower still than that for individuals; as a result, companies can neither maintain their operations nor meet payroll, let alone finance any import or export of goods. As a result, unemployment is running at a conservatively estimated 80%. But in this kind of situation the notions of unemployment and money themselves start to break down.


Hope?

The most hopeful part of the process is the burgeoning realization throughout the international community that, one way or another, Mugabe’s days are numbered. The SADC is beginning to stand up for itself, with Mbeki out of power in South Africa. Individual nations like Botswana have denounced the dictator, and the UN may finally move toward intervention. Even if Mugabe retains power after this drama, we are seeing the beginning of the end of his reign. The only question is how much longer the innocent people of Zimbabwe will be made to suffer for an old man's power-mad ravings.