Monday, December 29, 2014

18 people sent to jail for their part in China's worst factory fire in recent history



China's worst factory fire in recent history but most only get sentenced to a few years
Courts in the north-eas18 people sent to jail for their part in .
tern province of Jilin have sentenced seven company bosses and eleven local officials to at most nine years in jail for their part in China’s worst...
CLB.ORG.HK

Saturday, December 20, 2014

My Opinion: Polluting the World with Propaganda against China


This alarming article concentrating its breath on Beijing doesn't mention the Western world (particularly the United States) in direct cause of all this pollution madness. While China (and other Asian nations) was still agrarian and commercially undeveloped, the West was already ruthlessly polluting the world wantonly with its industrial revolution in the name of capitalistic greed. No industrialist stopped to consider the adage, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" or "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." One day, after the American embargo of China was lifted, the nation would catch up with the material wealth selfishly forged in the West. Why should China be blamed and its people suffer backwardness caused by an out-of-control scorching of the earth and waste laid to all the planet. Instead of pitying China for its pollution, the Guardian should open it's capitalistic mouth wider and shout to its own British government: "You should have thought of this when Thomas Hardy warned you over a hundred years ago."

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Insight - Labour movement 'concertmaster' tests Beijing's boundaries

Insight - Labour movement 'concertmaster' tests Beijing's boundaries

SHENZHEN, China Sun Dec 7, 2014 2:52am GMT
Labour lawyer Duan Yi (C), who is representing one of the defendants, speaks to the media outside a court in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in this April 15, 2014 file picture.   REUTERS/John Ruwitch/Files
Labour lawyer Duan Yi (C), who is representing one of the defendants, speaks to the media outside a court in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in this April 15, 2014 file picture.
CREDIT: REUTERS/JOHN RUWITCH/FILES

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(Reuters) - When local officials warned striking shoe factory workers in China's Pearl River Delta this summer that they were breaking the law, a slight, bespectacled figure barely 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 metres) tall faced them down.
"Where is the law that says striking is illegal? If this activity is prohibited by the law, then you need to say so with crystal clarity. Which law is it?" labour lawyer Duan Yi said he told them, with his characteristic growl.
They had no answer.
 
While striking workers and those helping them have often been harassed, detained and sometimes imprisoned, Duan, 57, is unscathed after nearly 10 years spent testing the boundaries as China's economy has been transformed.
"If you industrialise," says Duan, "it inevitably touches upon industrial relations. And if you don't resolve the problem of labour-capital relations, your industrialisation won't go very far."
China's ruling Communist Party is deeply paranoid about social instability arising from labour disputes. Though the country boasts the biggest union in the world, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), it is a state-run body that critics say regularly favours investors over workers.
Under President Xi Jinping, pressure has intensified on rights advocates, but that has not stemmed a wave of labour activism engendered by a slowing economy, shifting demographics and the rise of social media.
The rope that Beijing appears to give Duan is, say some, a recognition in official circles that labour disputes have not always been well handled.
Even President Xi, behind closed doors, criticised the ACFTU in late 2013 for not doing more for workers, according to academics and former union cadres.
"We hear internally that (Duan) has support," said a scholar at a state-run training institute linked to the ACFTU, the only legal union.
"The fact that there is space for him to exist shows that there are certain forces that have given him that space."
It helps that Duan, a dynamo in golf shirt and slacks, has a pedigree. The son of a military officer and a government ministry worker, he spent his childhood among "princelings" in an army compound in Beijing.
The hint of swagger in his walk might reflect that past or his eminent present.
"He is the concertmaster of China's labour movement," said Beijing-based scholar Wang Jiangsong.
STRIKING ADVICE
Duan has helped workers at one of the world's busiest ports negotiate for better pay and benefits, shown labourers at an Apple supplier in southern China how to establish a union branch, counselled Wal-Mart employees battling for payouts, and advised striking workers at IBM and Nokia how to protect their rights during ownership changes.
Workers flock to his modest 26th-floor offices in Shenzhen, southern China, to hear advice sometimes peppered with profanity.
That advice is that Chinese workers have the right to organise and, if necessary, strike. And more and more seem to be listening.
China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based watchdog with whom Duan cooperates, recorded 1,171 strikes in China from June 2011 through 2013. This year it has tracked 1,213 so far. That includes China's biggest strike in decades, involving 40,000 workers at a company that supplies Nike, Adidas and other global brands in April.
After setting up Laowei Law Firm in 2005, Duan and his colleagues have helped hundreds of individuals fight employers, but he soon realised that the problems they faced - unpaid arrears, lack of job security, inadequate social insurance payments - could only be resolved by collective bargaining, backed by the threat of action such as strikes.
Duan believes he has on occasion sailed close to the wind.
Late last year, he said he received warnings that the police had developed "opinions" about him in connection with a case he was working on, and that he ran the risk of detention.
Through a friend in the capital - a member of the "Second-Generation Reds", the children of China's Communist revolutionaries – he passed a letter to President Xi explaining his work. Thereafter, he said, the pressure eased.
He sometimes draws criticism for endangering his clients, too, such as security guards he was advising at a Guangzhou hospital, who were arrested after staging a rooftop protest.
Ma Jianjun, a lawyer who considers Duan a friend, says he has great respect for this "man of ideals" but doesn't give him a free pass.
"To a very large extent he is half-lawyer, half-social activist. From a lawyer's perspective he is unprofessional," he said.
"He's a controversial but impressive figure," said Mary Gallagher, associate professor of political science and China labour expert at the University of Michigan.
"I think people are really interested to see how far things go."

(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Will Waterman)