Keeping the Lid On.(labor unrest in China)(Brief Article)

The kind of labor unrest that has roiled China since 1997, when state- owned factories began shedding millions of jobs, did not pause for the recent Lunar New Year festival. In one bizarre incident in Guangzhou, seven hotheaded migrant laborers from Sichuan climbed up a 40- meter- high construction crane and threatened to jump unless someone coughed up their back pay. After an eight-hour standoff--during which the workers swung precariously back and forth on the crane--police and local authorities talked them into climbing down. One of them, Yi Yong, told the Southern Metropolis News, a local newspaper, that if the men didn't get paid, they would return "and reclaim the money with our lives."

A couple of decades ago Chinese had only one primitive method for seeking redress from the government. Citizens wrote petitions outlining their grievances and hand-carried them to government departments hoping that a sympathetic official might take notice. Hundreds of petitioners still gather each day at various offices in Beijing; truly desperate people try to stop the cars of top-ranking leaders, especially Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who is perceived as more sympathetic than others to the woes of common folk. But these days most such hopefuls are illiterate peasants who don't know any better. Thanks in no small measure to the regime's fear of violence among unemployed workers, urban Chinese now have a variety of more effective ways to make their complaints known.

Such "safety valves" for urban tensions run the gamut. The most popular city mayors have special hot lines for irate citizens to vent their problems. In February 2000, a district in the southern city of Shantou began holding elections for the "five worst civil servants," after which "work manners improved greatly," according to local media. For the past decade law offices and legal-aid organizations have proliferated ...