Out of Mao's Shadow

by Philip P. Pan

  A better strategy, the three men decided, would be to rally the workers against corruption. Here was a vulnerable spot in the party’s armor, an issue that not only inflamed public passions but also hinted at the deeper systemic shortcomings of one-party rule. Most important, it was a problem the party itself acknowledged and claimed to be trying to fight. That made it safer for people to protest against, because the party could not arrest them without hurting its moral authority on the issue and risking a greater backlash. “It was a question of tactics,” Xiao said. “We were trying to promote democracy, but we couldn’t say it. So we decided to protest against corruption. We wanted to use the corrupt behavior of factory and city officials to motivate people and wake them to the cause.”

  As Xiao and his comrades prepared to escalate the workers’ movement, they shifted the focus of their rhetoric from unpaid wages to official corruption. It was a small adjustment, but the consequences would be dramatic.

  ON MARCH 5, party officials from across the country gathered in Beijing for the opening of the annual session of the National People’s Congress. On paper the parliament is the highest organ of state power in China, but in reality it is just another tool of the party. Its meetings, held in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, are a ritual of Communist politics. Year after year, delegates from the provinces listen patiently to long-winded speeches by government ministers and vote overwhelmingly to approve the party’s policies. The exercise is intended to showcase the party’s democratic nature to the public and to the world, but the event is carefully staged, and there is rarely any real debate.

  On the same day that the Congress convened, more than a hundred workers crowded into a conference room in one of the old buildings of the bankrupt Liaoyang Ferroalloy Factory. On their agenda was a daring plan. While the Congress was in session, the Liaotie workers intended to stage a major demonstration in Liaoyang in an attempt to attract the attention of the party chief, Jiang Zemin, and other national leaders. Some workers believed that party leaders would sympathize with their plight, while others had lost faith in the party and considered the leadership as bad as the party men in Liaoyang. But they all agreed that drawing the central government’s attention to their factory would put pressure on city officials to pay them and perhaps prompt an investigation into the bankruptcy. With a show of hands, the workers voted to stage the protest in thirteen days. Then they elected a dozen representatives to negotiate on their behalf with the government. Xiao, Yao, and Pang were among them.

  Later in the meeting, Pang stood to speak. A tall, slender man who resembled an elderly professor but had only a high school education, he read to the workers a series of letters that he had written on their behalf and opened the floor to suggestions for improvements. Xiao noticed that Pang had crafted the letters carefully. There was no mention of their dissatisfaction with the political system nor of their support for democratic reform. Instead he positioned the workers as loyal supporters of the party leadership and repeatedly emphasized that their grievances were in line with the party’s laws and policies. One letter addressed to Jiang Zemin resorted to flattery, citing the party chief’s empty political theories and speeches approvingly and referring to him as a “beloved” leader and “respected elder.” Another appealed to a new provincial governor, Bo Xilai, for help, describing him as a “well-known virtuous official and excellent party member.” At the same time, the letters attacked Fan and city officials in vivid and unsparing terms:

  With the factory facing the massive challenge of the market and already in trouble, it was Fan Yicheng’s duty, in his official position as both managing director and legal representative, to construct a strategy for improving its overall economic performance. It was his responsibility to provide leadership in improving product quality, output performance, and the profitability of the enterprise….

  Fan Yicheng did none of this. Following his appointment, he adopted a policy of cronyism in which all those who submitted to his will did well and anyone who resisted was dealt with accordingly. All dissent was outlawed. His close aides, friends and relatives were placed in company positions from which he could directly benefit…. These people worked hand in glove as a team to swallow billions of yuan in state funds, resulting in losses of tens of billions of yuan in state property—we have detailed evidence of all of this…. The sweat and blood of workers has been used to nurture a colony of parasites. Under the pretext of procuring goods, Fan took holidays abroad and gathered large amounts of foreign exchange to fill his personal coffers to the brim. At the factory, he bullied and intimidated workers, and used hundreds of thousands worth of public funds to refurbish his house and send his two children to study abroad. Fan and his corrupt friends used state funds to eat, drink, gamble, whore, and do anything they wanted. There were no limits to their extravagance….

  Liaotie’s bankruptcy was not the result of economic restructuring any more than it was brought about by poor sales. It was the direct result of coordinated embezzlement of national assets and leeching off the workers’ sweat and blood by Fan Yicheng and his gang of parasites, with the collusion and support of former mayor Gong Shangwu….

  The bankruptcy went through, leaving the workforce in tears and corrupt officials laughing all the way to the bank. Moreover, they are now using the embezzled funds to set up new private enterprises. As if by magic, they have transformed themselves into entrepreneurs, using the workers’ sweat and blood as building blocks for their nest of corruption. Illegal activities have produced a legal company, and the government has done its utmost to cover up and collude in this almost perfect crime. Where on earth are we to go to find reason and justice? Is it possible that a Chinese nation under the leadership of the Communist Party can leave no space for workers?

  Xiao realized that Pang was trying to drive a wedge between national leaders in Beijing and local officials in Liaoyang. His approach put party leaders on the spot, demanding they live up to their own rhetoric and laws, while also giving them an out, a chance to distance themselves from corrupt behavior that hurt the government’s image, even if they condoned such behavior elsewhere or engaged in it themselves. In effect, the letters were asking party leaders to sacrifice their underlings in Liaoyang to bolster the party’s reputation and strengthen its grip on power.

  But there was also another motive behind Pang’s choice of words. He and the other worker leaders understood that their chances of success were limited if they were alone. They had already staged several protests, yet local officials had ignored their demands and the central government had shown no interest in intervening. By focusing on corruption instead of just their economic grievances, they wanted to build a larger movement and draw support from workers suffering similar abuses at other factories. They planned to post the letters in neighborhoods across the city and they hoped to inspire others to join them. They hoped that workers would read about the corruption that shut down Liaotie and think of what had happened to their own enterprises, that they would read about Fan Yicheng and think of the behavior of the party officials who had ruined their lives.

  We the working masses have decided that we cannot tolerate these corrupt elements who have imposed an illegal bankruptcy on our factory. We must take back justice and dignity. We will not give up until we get back all welfare payments, unpaid wages, and compensation…. Our respected compatriots, brothers and fathers, we are not anti-party, anti-socialism hooligans who harm people’s lives and disrupt social order. Our demands are all legal under the constitution and the law…. Let us join forces in this action for legal rights and against corruption. Long live the spirit of Liaoyang!

  Xiao knew it was a long shot. There were reasons why workers in Liaoyang had not come together before. Conditions at each factory were different, so each workforce had its own grievances. A payment that would satisfy workers at one factory might be dismissed as insignificant at another, and what some workers considered an important complaint others might see as secondary. By fo
cusing on corruption, the Liaotie workers wanted to bridge these divisions. But they were cautious, too. They did not want to alert the authorities, so they reached out only to people they trusted. If a Liaotie worker was married to a worker from another enterprise, they would ask the spouse to spread the word. If they met workers protesting outside a government building, they might ask for their help. But it was difficult to establish the trust necessary to build alliances, especially with distant factories scattered across the city, and so there was no attempt to establish a citywide organization. The Liaotie workers tried to notify other factories of their plans, but it seemed too dangerous to do much more.

  The effort might have failed if not for a blunder by one of the workers’ enemies. A day or two after the opening of the National People’s Congress, Xiao was at home watching television coverage of the event when he saw Gong Shangwu, the city’s former mayor and party chief, speaking to a reporter about the city’s economic situation. “There are laid-off workers in Liaoyang, but there are no unemployed workers,” he declared. “Laid-off workers receive a living stipend of 280 yuan per month.” Xiao was stunned. It was a ridiculous statement, and it infuriated workers across the city. How could a senior official, the chairman of their local legislature and a delegate representing them in Beijing, make such a claim with a straight face? The hundreds of thousands who had lost their jobs and were struggling to make ends meet in Liaoyang, a city of two million, were in no mood to hear a portly party boss tell them that they were not really unemployed. The blatant lie about the living stipend was even worse. It was as if Gong expected workers to play along with the fiction, just so he could brag to the nation about what a good job he was doing.

  The outrage in the city’s working-class neighborhoods was palpable, and the Liaotie worker leaders gathered at Yao’s store and decided to move up their protest by a week. That left them just a few days to get organized and mobilize the workforce. Another meeting of the workers at Liaotie was called, and this time more than six hundred people showed up, forcing the group to find a bigger room. The police must have noticed such a large gathering, but the workers didn’t care. They were angry, and after all, they said to themselves, what crime was there in holding a meeting? Xiao proposed a new slogan—“Impeach Gong Shangwu, Liberate Liaoyang”—and Pang drafted a new letter with the same title. Committees were set up and tasks were assigned. One group was assigned to make banners. Others were organized to take charge of morale, safety, and emergency medical care during the demonstration.

  One of the worker leaders, a stocky carpenter named Chen Dianfan, proposed that they carry a portrait of Mao during the protest. He volunteered to get one and build a large frame for it. Xiao immediately agreed. He considered Mao a disastrous leader, but he knew that some of the old workers, in their nostalgia for socialism and equality among the classes, overlooked the suffering he caused. Xiao was not beyond tapping into such sentiment if it meant drawing more workers into the streets. If the party could use Mao to defend its corrupt ways, he thought, why couldn’t the workers use his image to fight back? Marching under Mao’s portrait would also help position the workers as loyal citizens, making it easier for those anxious about getting arrested to join them and more difficult for the authorities to suppress the demonstration.

  Yao took Pang’s letters to a shop to be typed up, printed, and photocopied, along with a notice announcing the date of the protest. In their homes, the workers made paste by boiling a mixture of water and flour, and then, in the middle of the night, they set out on bicycles with stacks of the papers. They worked in pairs in the dark, targeting worker neighborhoods across the city. Xiao was responsible for one not too far from Liaotie. His partner watched out for the police while he pasted the letters on walls and telephone poles. It was cold, and he could see his breath in the air as he hurried, trying to prevent the glue from freezing. He wore plastic bags to protect his hands, and brushed an extra layer of paste over each letter to make it more difficult for police to tear down. By the time they finished, it was 3 A.M.

  The workers continued to hold meetings, sometimes in factory buildings, sometimes at Yao’s store. Xiao emphasized the need to maintain order in the crowd and prevent tempers from flaring during the protest. Any rash or illegal behavior, he worried, would give the police an excuse to move in. Finally, as the date of the protest approached, the workers discussed a subject that had been nagging at them. What would they do if the police began arresting them? A contingency plan was drafted. The workers considered Xiao, Yao, and Pang their top leaders, but now they made a list of more than forty other workers active in the movement who agreed to take their place if anything happened to them. If police arrested Xiao, Yao, and Pang, another team would take over and lead protests demanding their release. And if those workers were also arrested, another group would step up, and then another and another. At least, that was the way it was supposed to work.

  EVERYTHING SEEMED POSSIBLE after the first exhilarating day of the protests. As workers from factories across the city poured into the streets, in numbers greater than he had ever expected, Xiao was seized with excitement. Some of the workers carried banners with the names of their factories, others with slogans denouncing corruption. Xiao saw parents marching with their children and pedicab drivers offering rides to the weak and elderly, and he felt proud to be walking among them. As he stood in front of the crowd, delivering a speech outside the courthouse or reading one of Pang’s letters through a bullhorn, he was confident that the long struggle of the workers of the Liaoyang Ferroalloy Factory was nearing a successful conclusion.

  Emotions ran high the second day, too. The highlight was a speech that Yao gave in front of city hall. He was standing on a platform, his arm cradling an elderly woman, the widow of a fellow worker. Tears ran down both their faces as Yao raised his voice in anger. “We devoted our youth to the party, but no one supports us in old age!” he cried. “We gave our youth to the party for nothing!” The crowd of tens of thousands was silent, transfixed by his words, and when he finished speaking, it broke into thunderous applause.

  After they accepted the government’s offer to negotiate, the Liaotie representatives were ushered into a plush conference room on the second floor of city hall. A deputy mayor, the police chief, the chief judge, and ten other municipal officials sat on one side of a table, and the twelve worker leaders sat on the other, Xiao, Yao, and Pang among them. The atmosphere was tense but the discussion cordial. The deputy mayor promised to address the workers’ complaints if the protests ended, and the police chief pledged that no one would be arrested. Yao told them that the workers were willing to work with the government and would be satisfied if it kept its promises. Xiao raised the issue of corruption, arguing that if corrupt officials and managers were punished, the city’s factories would thrive again. Others discussed the unpaid wages and benefits. At the end of the meeting, the deputy mayor said the government needed more time to respond, because the mayor and party secretary were out of town, presumably attending the Congress in Beijing. But he assured the workers their concerns would be addressed, and their allegations of corruption at Liaotie fully investigated. Encouraged by these conciliatory words, the workers agreed to call off the protests and give the government time to act.

  Xiao left the two-hour meeting feeling good about what they had accomplished and optimistic. State media outlets were maintaining a blackout on news of their protests, but foreign news organizations including the Voice of America had reported them, and so Xiao was convinced that party leaders in Beijing were also paying attention. Reviewing the day’s events in Yao’s store that evening, other worker leaders from Liaotie agreed that a pause in the demonstrations made sense. People were exhausted after two days of marches and protests, after all. But the worker leaders also decided they would not wait indefinitely. At a large meeting the next day, the workers agreed that if the city did not respond within six days, they would take to the streets again—before the end of the parliament se
ssion in Beijing.

  The first three days passed quietly. On the afternoon of the fourth, one of the Liaotie managers summoned Xiao and told him the deputy mayor wanted to meet with him in private. Xiao did not want to go alone, and instead brought Yao, Pang, and a fourth worker representative with him. A government car whisked them to city hall. The deputy mayor was an older man named Chen Qiang, a tall, bookish bureaucrat with glasses and a dark complexion. He had impressed the workers in the meeting earlier in the week, because he spoke to them without the patronizing, condescending tone most officials used when addressing workers, and he spoke to them again now in a sympathetic voice.

  “Old Xiao, I hope you’ll put the brakes on this movement as soon as possible,” he said. “Don’t push it any further. Your problem is already an international one now. Overseas, they’re calling you labor leaders.”

  Xiao understood exactly what he meant. In the mind of a party official, it was not good to be a “labor leader.” The party regarded labor leaders as threats.

  “I hope you’ll stop doing this, because we understand this is serious,” Chen continued. City officials were willing to continue meeting with the worker representatives, he said, but the protests needed to stop.

  Xiao knew Chen was delivering a message on behalf of the government, but he sensed that the deputy mayor was genuinely concerned. He assumed that meant others in the government were pushing for a crackdown despite the police chief’s no-arrests pledge. Perhaps, he thought, the decision had already been made. Still, he could not imagine backing down. The city had not yet taken any action to address their concerns. The next protest was scheduled to take place in two days, and the workers had already begun posting notices around the city. Xiao thanked the deputy mayor, but said to him, “We can’t rush out and tell everyone not to protest just because you told us not to.”