Thursday, 8 July 2021

Photo: stone wall, by Great Han



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/photo-stone-wall-by-great-han/
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Wednesday, 7 July 2021

Translation: Censors Erase Father’s Grief After Shenzhen Factory Suicide

Censors have scrubbed a father’s anguished “plea for help,” written in the aftermath of his son’s suicide, from Chinese social media. His son, a 17-year-old Hubei high school student, committed suicide after being forced to work in a Shenzhen factory as part of an “internship” required for graduation. It is not uncommon for schools hungry for cash to make such arrangements for their students—under threat of expulsion if they don’t finish the “internship.” Last year, the Financial Times found that an Apple iPhone manufacturer was using high school labor illegally through a similar scheme. 

Yu Ming (also identified as Yu Jun in some media reports), the 17-year-old from Hubei, was studying computer science at a vocational school when his class was dispatched to Shenzhen for a computer training course that never materialized. Instead, the students were pressed into moving boxes at Welco Wong’s Technology (Shenzhen) Limited. Although the factory paid 26 yuan ($4) per hour, the students only received 14 yuan per hour—the school received the remainder. During his time there, Yu was forced to work night shifts and bullied by the assembly line boss, who did not allow the severely short-sighted Yu to fix his glasses after they were broken during the course of his work. In a now-censored essay preserved by CDT, Yu Ming’s father documented his son’s final days and wrote, “Child, I’m sorry, your father moved bricks his whole life, and now they are teaching you to move boxes”: 

On June 25, 2021 at 10:28 a.m., my son, Yu Ming, a 17-year-old sophomore studying computer science at Danjiangkou No. 4 Middle School in Shiyan, Hubei Province, jumped to his death from a dormitory hallway in a Shenzhen industrial park. Just 15 days before, he had set off for Shenzhen as part of a school-organized internship at Welco Wong’s Technology (Shenzhen) Limited. 

[…] The factory has continued to operate normally since my son’s death and hasn’t allowed anyone to share news of his suicide. Most of the workers don’t know my son is already dead. The police instructed security guards and factory workers to delete videos and photographs documenting his death. Several students agitated by the incident were taken into custody and sent home—they are now waiting on the results of their COVID tests. As of my arrival in Shenzhen, the factory hasn’t sent a single person to discuss what happened to my son. It’s as if nothing happened. 

As a father, I blame myself. I regret that I didn’t protect my son. All the suffering we bore to raise him, gone just like that. The police department ruled out murder. I disagree. I didn’t yell, I didn’t cause a stink, but that doesn’t mean I’m not angry! As a father, when I think back to all those moments with my son: we cried, we argued, we fought, we cursed. He had become a man. That after only 15 days of an internship in Shenzhen he could commit suicide …. 

What did my son go through in those few short days? I think back to our last phone call. I said, “Your teacher warned me: if you skip work just once you’ll be expelled.” He said that work is too exhausting. That he had a night shift every night for over 10 hours. That it was exhausting. That at noon he couldn’t eat. That he got stomach pain. He told me the assembly line leader had it out for him, that the school had rejected his request for time off, that he’d been denied permission to move to the day shift. He couldn’t eat. He told me he didn’t want to do it anymore. I said, “No way. Even soldiers need a high school diploma. Get your glasses fixed and soldier on.” I never imagined that in the moment my son needed me most, I wouldn’t stand by his side. If I’d known earlier, I wouldn’t have cared about the high school diploma. My son’s health and safety would be enough. 

During these days in Shenzhen, I’ve felt profoundly helpless. My son’s classmates and teacher have come to see me, bringing their sorrow and their sympathy, and have urged me to seek justice against the factory and the assembly-line manager—they were the ones who killed my son. There is evidence of illegal employment and forced labor. In head-splitting agony, I hesitated. But I finally collected myself. I know that I must keep the big picture in mind. I know that I have little power against the company’s formidable legal representation, but I believe that sooner or later, justice will be done. I call on leadership to help me seek justice and a public apology. 

[…] Welco Wong’s Technology (Shenzhen) Limited tricked over 100 underage high school students into working in their factory by claiming to offer them a computer training course and making a lucrative offer to their school: For every hour of student labor, the school would earn 12 yuan, while the students would earn 14 yuan. All of this happened during the height of the Guangdong coronavirus outbreak. In fact, there was no computer training course. On day one, they gave everyone work clothes and had them set up electronic equipment. From day two onwards, they were dispatched to move boxes. In the words of the students: In school they were told it would be a typing course, but in fact they were tricked into moving bricks. One box was about 20 kilos [about 26 pounds], the approximate weight of five bricks. 

[…] They had to work ten hours a day. They were not allowed to take time off or skip work. They pulled night shifts every night and dozing off was prohibited. The line leader would oversee them, counting up [who was present] and reporting back to the school. The school would notify [absentees] that if they didn’t change their ways they would be expelled!!! When I learned this, my heart crumbled. Even capitalism before Liberation [pre-1949] wasn’t like this, right? I barely dare to believe that these sort of things can happen in China’s capital of technology, Shenzhen! A child only accustomed to holding a pen or typing suddenly tasked with such hard labor, the skin scraped off of his fingers. Is it not illegal to force a child under the age of 18 to perform extreme physical labor in a high-pressure environment?

[…] The image of my son collapsing into bed after a night shift suddenly appears in my mind. A voice shouts:

Child, you dozed off during your 12-hour night shift. Next time you’re out

Child, you’re too slow, they’ve switched you several times. If the next post doesn’t work, you’re out

Child, leave requests go on the desk. The night shift went long and the supervisor didn’t see it: that counts as skipping work

Child, write a self-criticism and change for work. You have boxes to move all night

[…] Child, the boxes aren’t heavy, just five bricks each

Child, it’s fine, just pretend moving boxes is computer science

Child, I’m sorry, your father moved bricks his whole life, and now they are teaching you to move boxes

Child, your teacher says if you hold on for just three months you’ll have the chance to graduate, but if you can’t, you won’t [Chinese]

Shenzhen was once the labor protest capital of China, but worker protests have steadily decreased from a high of 75 in 2015 to just 11 in 2019. On May Day, an international celebration of the eight-hour work day, Shenzhen’s Communist Party committee published a video celebrating the city’s “996” culture of overwork. Proposed amendments to Shenzhen’s Employee Wage Payment Regulations are likely to further weaken employees’ power. China Labour Bulletin explained the likely changes: 

Under draft regulations discussed by the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress on 27 May, workers employed on an irregular work hours basis will no longer be entitled to 300 percent overtime payments on statutory holidays. Also, employers can delay wage payments for up to a month, and the minimum wage will only be adjusted every three years rather than two.

[…] The revised regulations will likely aid employers in legal disputes with employees over bonus and wage payments. From now on, if wages are not specifically stated in an employment contract, payment should be made based on the average wage in the city during the previous year. Annual bonus payments will henceforth only be made according to employment contract specifications.

[…] It is almost impossible to live in Shenzhen on a wage of just 2,200 yuan per month. The average wage in the city last year was 7,825 yuan per month, according to the municipal human resources and social security bureau, nearly four times higher than the minimum wage. Further delaying the minimum wage increase will place even greater pressure on the poorest paid workers. [Source]



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/translation-censors-erase-fathers-grief-after-shenzhen-factory-suicide/
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Tuesday, 6 July 2021

Photo: The last tribute, by Gauthier DELECROIX – 郭天



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/photo-the-last-tribute-by-gauthier-delecroix-%e9%83%ad%e5%a4%a9/
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Friday, 2 July 2021

On 100th Anniversary of CCP, Xi Declares Triumph of Socialism

On July 1, weeks of secretive preparations for the Party’s centenary culminated in a massive ceremony in Tiananmen Square punctuated by a martial speech delivered by Xi Jinping. Xi warned that anyone who dare bully, oppress, or enslave China “will find their head broken and blood flowing against a great wall of steel built with the flesh and blood of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people!” At Reuters, Yew Lun Tian and Ryan Woo recapped the speech:

In an hour-long address from Tiananmen Square, Xi pledged to build up China’s military, committed to the “reunification” of Taiwan and said social stability would be ensured in Hong Kong while protecting China’s security and sovereignty.

“The people of China are not only good at destroying the old world, they have also created a new world,” said Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic. “Only socialism can save China.”

[…] Xi closed his speech by leading two crowd-rousing cheers: “long live the CCP that is great, glorious and right”, and “long live the people who are great, glorious and heroic”. [Source]

At The New York Times, Chris Buckley and Keith Bradsher reported on the significance of Xi’s highly-anticipated speech:

The speech was laden with symbols intended to show that China and its ruling party would not tolerate foreign obstruction on the country’s path to becoming a superpower. The event’s pageantry symbolized a powerful nation firmly, yet comfortably, in control: A crowd of 70,000 people waved flags, sang and cheered in unison. Troops marched and jets flew overhead in perfect formations. And each time Mr. Xi made a pugnacious comment, the crowd applauded and roared approval.

[…] “His speech clearly hinted at the United States, the audience in China won’t miss that,” Deng Yuwen, a former editor of a Communist Party newspaper who now lives in the United States, said by telephone. “His other message that stood out was that the party is the representative of the people’s and the whole country’s interests — nobody can try to split the party from the nation; they’re a unified whole.”

[…] “This was not a speech by a leader who is planning on stepping down from power anytime soon,” said Jude Blanchette, who holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The extraordinary pomp and circumstance was designed to say: The Chinese Communist Party is strong, unified, and it isn’t going anywhere.” [Source]

Xi has shown a consistent predilection for sartorial iconoclasm. He generally sports an anorak instead of the suit and tie favored by Party leaders—and lustily embraced by Xi’s former political rival Bo Xilai—since reform-minded premier Hu Yaobang introduced the fashion in 1984 as an implicit break with the Mao era. Xi has also abandoned Party leaders’ tradition of dyeing their hair jet black. “It’s an image of the party that is more relatable and less apparatchik-like in its aesthetics,” Julian Gerwitz told the New York Times in 2019.

No detail was too small for the events organizers. 100,000 pigeons and doves were released over Tiananmen as the song “Ode to The Motherland” played. Before their release, Beijing’s epidemic prevention department collected stool and blood samples from the animals. The birds were also required to partake in three rounds of training before the ceremony. Such meticulous—even obsessive—planning is not unprecedented: all 10,000 pigeons assembled for the PRC’s 65th anniversary in 2014 were subject to full-body inspections before their release.

On Twitter, China experts engaged in a rather circular argument about the correct translation of the chengyu 头破流血 Tóu pò liúxuè:

https://twitter.com/niubi/status/1410777468651413505

In the months before the anniversary, the state highlighted a campaign against “historical nihilism,” which involved a crackdown of those critical of Mao. Yet as Julia Lovell pointed out to the AFP’s Laurie Chen, the centenary’s embrace of Mao is obviously incongruous with modern Chinese society:

”Open debate about the Mao-era is impossible in China today,” said Julia Lovell, professor of modern Chinese history at Birkbeck, University of London.

“To Xi, the Mao revival entails party control, celebrating Mao’s philosophy of ruthless struggle against adversaries and centralising personal power.”

That “sits awkwardly within a China that’s so transformed from the Mao era,” she added. [Source]

The irony of the Party’s embrace of Mao is made painfully clear in the make-up of its membership. The proletariat—workers, farmers, herders and fishermen—make up only 34% of Party members and entrepreneurs—a euphemism for capitalists—have been allowed to join since the early 2000s. A seat at the centenary was a hot ticket among China’s 626 billionaires, as proximity to power carries lucrative stock market benefits—and possibly insurance against political persecution. At The South China Morning Post, Zhang Shidong reported on the plutocrats able to secure themselves a seat at the ceremony celebrating 100 years of communism in China:

Wang Xing, the 42-year-old chairman of Meituan, the food delivery giant that is currently the subject of an antitrust probe, was among attendees of the Party’s 100th anniversary celebrations at Tiananmen Square on Thursday morning, according to live television footage. Wang is China’s 43rd richest man according to Hurun Report, with his fortunes estimated at US$34 billion.

[…] Lei Jun, the billionaire founder of smartphone maker Xiaomi, was also among notable Chinese entrepreneurs who joined the centenary ceremony, posting about his participation on the Weibo social media platform. Lei, 52 this year, is China’s 50th richest man, with a net worth estimated at US$31 billion according to Hurun.

[…] Three of Hong Kong’s business elite made their way to Beijing to attend the ruling party’s centenary. They were Yuen Mo, chairman of privately held China Merchants Industry Holdings, Victor Fung the chairman of the Fung Group that took Li & Fung private last year, and Allan Zeman, chairman of unlisted Lan Kwai Fong Holdings. Zeman, 72, is also chairman of Wynn Macau, one of the casino operators in the world’s largest gambling hub. [Source]

The Chinese internet was, like Tiananmen, draped in red during the ceremony. Most webpages redesigned their homepage to celebrate the occasion. The case of Xiaoyuzhou, China’s most popular podcast app, is instructive. Once a “refuge for the liberal urban young population” in the words of one anonymous Chinese producer, the app began promoting “Red Tales of Pujiang River,” a hagiographic retelling of the Party’s history in Shanghai, in the months before the anniversary. All 50 of Weibo’s trending topics were related to the Party’s 100th anniversary. The following day, Weibo’s top trends returned to non-Party related themes: a scandal involving an internet novelist, a woman’s near death experience after eating a wild mushroom, and whether it is better to go to graduate school or earn a 8000RMB salary. A popular entertainment Weibo account @是段小姐来了 posted a public “stat sheet” tracking which celebrities had posted messages congratulating the Party on its 100th anniversary—and more damningly—which had not. One user remarked, “The little general of the 21st century Red Guards sees all.”

What does it all mean? The Economist’s Chaguan argued that the triumphalist vision put forth during the Party’s 100th anniversary is a dangerous development:

Chinese claims to performance legitimacy, to use the jargon of political scientists, are often strikingly detailed, and not especially ideological. All summer, party organs have praised Mr Xi for providing better education, more stable and satisfactory incomes, more reliable social-security payments, higher-quality medical services, more comfortable housing and a more beautiful environment. This focus on real-world problem-solving is called proof that “socialist democracy”, meaning rule by unelected technocrats, is more “authentic” than Western political systems. As Chinese officials tell it, Western politicians only worry about some people’s interests every few years at election time.

[…] When Chaguan was first posted to Beijing as a reporter, 23 years ago, officials were somewhat defensive about one-party rule. They described their political system as a work in progress, befitting a China that was still poor. The party could be hard to spot as reformist leaders wooed foreign businesspeople. Visiting bigwigs would often meet government ministers, city mayors and university presidents, rather than each institution’s real boss, its party secretary. Now senior officials openly talk of their faith in the party like priests describing a vocation. “East, west, south, north and centre; the party leads everything,” says Mr Xi.

[…] The party is increasingly unwilling to accept any principled criticism of its 21st-century autocracy, which it describes as the moral equal of any democracy. In truth, that claim is untested. For one thing, censors, propagandists and security agencies devote so much effort to hiding errors and silencing critics that it is not possible to say public consent is fully informed. For another, every political and economic system eventually makes mistakes that are too big to conceal, such as a financial crash or defeat in war. [Source]

At The New Yorker, Evan Osnos tied Xi’s dark warning about foreign threats bound to crack their heads and spill blood to the country’s inward turn:

In the machinery of a one-party state, in which the words of a paramount leader amplify as they move through its cogs, Xi’s dark warnings created a thriving cult of paranoia. Around Beijing, posters went up, warning people to watch out for foreign spies, who might try to seduce Chinese women in order to gain access to state secrets. In rural backwaters, the Party warned of Western-backed “color revolutions” and “Christian infiltration.” A university in Beijing planned to display a copy of the Magna Carta, which curbed the powers of an English king in the thirteenth century, until officials got nervous; it was sent to the residence of the British Ambassador. In 2016, the state-media regulators who had once introduced “Dallas” issued new directives with a very different cast of mind; they barred television programs that joked about Chinese traditions or showcased “overt admiration for Western life styles.”

This summer, in preparation for the Party’s hundredth birthday, on July 1st, officials launched a propaganda campaign that would have looked retro were it not resurgent. On television, billboards, and across the Chinese Internet, the Party extolled the wisdom of Xi (“The People’s Leader”), who has liberated himself from term limits; it rallied the public to watch out for shadowy “hostile forces” within and without, as well as for corruption, ideological lassitude, and democratic temptation. In the days leading up to the celebration, primary-school parents at a school in Shandong Province were advised to “conduct a thorough search for religious books, reactionary books, homegrown reprints or photocopies of books published overseas, and for any books or audio and video content not officially printed and distributed by Xinhua Bookstore.” On June 28th, at an outdoor rally held in the Bird’s Nest stadium that was built for the Olympics, the Party offered a congratulatory, and selective, reading of its record: it glorified the Long March of the nineteen-thirties, skipped over the famine and turmoil of the fifties and sixties, and cheered China’s economic and technological advances, culminating in its rapid recovery from the covid-19 pandemic. Three days later, in Tiananmen Square, before a crowd of seventy thousand, Xi delivered a blunt warning to the outside world. “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress, or enslave us,” he said. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

[…] As China’s Communist Party enters its second century, its mix of confidence and paranoia—pride in its achievements and fear of the outside—reflects the fundamental uncertainty of its project. Chinese Communists have already ruled their country longer than the Soviets ruled theirs, but that’s a distinction that breeds both satisfaction and anxiety. No Communist government has ever made it to its second centennial celebration. During the Trump Administration, the incompetence and infighting of American politics provided a valuable propaganda tool for Xi’s government, which may well endure in the decades ahead. But Americans ended Trump’s Presidency after a single term, thanks to a feature of governance that becomes ever harder to maintain in a one-party state ruled by a strongman: the power of self-correction. [Source]

See also an interview on PRX’s The World with CDT’s Xiao Qiang and Yale Law School’s Yangyang Cheng on their “Reflections on the 100-year anniversary of China’s Communist Party.”



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/on-100th-anniversary-of-ccp-xi-declares-triumph-of-socialism/
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Thursday, 1 July 2021

PRI The World – Front row seat at China’s 100th anniversary celebrations



source https://www.pri.org/file/2021-07-01/front-row-seat-china-s-100th-anniversary-celebrations#new_tab
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Mind Matters – Chinese Communist Party: 100 Years of Erasing, Rewriting History



source https://mindmatters.ai/2021/07/chinese-communist-party-100-years-of-erasing-rewriting-history/#new_tab
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Photo: sunset hour, by Thomas_Yung



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/photo-sunset-hour-by-thomas_yung/
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