OPINION> Zhu Yuan
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OPINION> Zhu Yuan
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Enough thought for interests of workers
By Zhu Yuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-29 07:53
History can never be reversed, but we sometimes need to look back in time to get a perspective for a solution to today's problems. That explains why history has been described in China as a mirror, which can reflect what we can hardly make sense of at present. Film director Jia Zhangke's recent book Interviews of Chinese Workers can serve as such a mirror, from which we get a glimpse of the changes that Chinese workers as a whole have undergone in the past decades. Thanks to its truthfulness and its vivid description of individual workers' life of change, it has been selected by Internet portal sina.com as one of 10 best books of the first six months in 2009. In this country's revolutionary shift from a planned economy to a market one in the past three decades, there has been a dramatic change in the social status of workers. As a whole, this social group has fallen from the leading class to the bottom of the social scale. Once upon a time, being a member of the working class was such a pride that some even tried to find connections to get admitted to a big State-owned factory. Compared with villagers, who got no social benefit at all except the meager income from selling their grains to the State, a worker once employed in a factory, especially a big one, was assured of almost everything from cradle to grave. With a rationed economy, living standards were lower than today's, but much higher than that in rural areas. What made a substantial difference was the fact that a worker had no sense of insecurity at all. When collectivism dominated as an ideology in China at that time, a State-owned factory provided the same security for every worker. The sense of security came from the mentality that one was just part of a collective, which the State would in no way allow to collapse. In other words, once an element of the State-owned unit, always a part of the State. In addition, they got psychological satisfaction from being the "leading class" as Chairman Mao hailed them. Such a label meant something substantial at the very beginning of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), when propaganda teams of workers were sent to universities and institutions and called the shots there. However, the living standards of the workers saw no substantial improvement. The fact that every worker got almost the same pay became the best way to keep people content with lower standards of living. Reading that part of history in Jia's book, we have enough reason to be sympathetic with the workers who are missing the good old days as many factories became bankrupt in the middle of the 1990s and millions were laid off. Despite financial aid from the State, the majority of laid-off workers are struggling to make ends meet. Nevertheless, their miserable conditions do not justify the retaining of the old planned economy and the big iron-rice bowl system, under which one enjoyed a sense of security as part of the collective rather than because of one's capabilities. The interests of many workers were affected adversely in the process of State-owned enterprises being restructured into private ones because of under-the-table deals between local governments and private business. Restructuring should never be the excuse for workers, who have been working in State-owned enterprises for years, to be laid off without adequate compensation. When China becomes more pluralistic and wealthier than before, it would be unfair for workers alone to suffer by being deprived of the fruits of economic reform. That may be one of the messages for readers in this book. E-mail: Zhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 07/29/2009 page8) |
