China

Action on Covid-19

Epidemic control workers in Beijing Several reports say that the Covid spike in China, following the scrapping of curbs there, has been ultra-fast and may even have passed its peak of infections already. We will see. The danger of a fierce new variant arising in that spike and spreading world-wide is not yet gone. We call for: • a sustained public-health testing-and-surveillance system • good sick pay for all • restore NHS funding and repeal privatisation • requisition private hospitals to augment NHS resources • bring social care into the public sector with NHS-level pay and conditions for...

Covid surge and worker revolt in China

Covid is spreading very rapidly in China, creating widespread alarm and anger against the government. On 7 January, workers in a medical equipment factory in Chongqing, Southwest China rebelled against recruitment agencies and factory management after workers were laid off (on some reports, up to 10,000). Workers clashed with armed police who came to suppress the revolt. Footage posted on Chinese social media shows workers beating up agency recruiters, destroying hoards of medical stock, burning cars, and throwing objects at the police. The company, Zybio Inc., produces PCR testing kits...

China simmers after November revolt

December 10 was a Global Day of Protest against Apple and their supplier Foxconn over their treatment of up to 300,000 workers at their plants in Zhengzhou, China. In late October Taiwan-based Foxconn’s workers rebelled against effectively held prisoner in the plants for months to maintain production. In the name of “zero Covid”, workers were locked in at close quarters with those ill with Covid. Thousands of workers broke out of the complex. There were fights with security police. New workers recruited to the factories then took action over pay. Foxconn was forced to pay them each 10,000 yuan...

China erupts: the wage earners are key (leaflet for 10 December protests)

Leaflet for Foxconn / China democracy solidarity protests, 10 December 中国爆发:工薪阶层是关键 过去四个星期见证了中国 33 年来最大规模的工人阶级反抗!中国许多主要城市(南京、上海、深圳、北京、武汉等)都陆续发生了法街头抗议,还出现了抗议者与警察之间的冲突。 在全国各地街头抗议活动的压力下,中国政府令人震惊地宣布妥协。他们宣布解除防疫隔离政策。此前,劳动者被迫在自己的住所里长久地隔离,也存在郑州新港富士康工厂园区地工人在工厂中闭环工作长达数周的情况。中国政府称希望这些隔离措施能够实现清零。隔离措施也有利于使政府压制社区层面的抗议,并在感染期间维持工厂生产。 于政府看来,隔离政策相当于在无需投资疫苗和卫生设施的情况下防止病毒传播的便捷而有效的方式。。中国的疫苗及其接种政策对实现清零 效果甚微。科兴疫苗对于防止新冠感染的功效为 51% ,仅略高于世界卫生组织对新冠疫苗设定的 50% 功效阈值。疫苗在已退休人士中的普及度也非常低。 对于政府而言,剥夺劳动者自由流动和任何社会生活的权利比投入公共医疗建设更方便。中国不再是一个没有能力创造卫生服务的贫困国家。它吹嘘说它很快就会超过美国的国内生产总值。尽管中国去年资产大幅下降(36%),但在2021年,这个国家仍有535位资产超过10亿美元的中国人...

Morning Star on China protests

In the wake of ten deaths in a fire in Xinjiang province — deaths, it is widely believed, that could have been avoided if Covid ultra-lockdown had not prevented escape or rescue — Chinese people took to the streets across the country, especially over the weekend of 26-27 November. Some protesters borrowed the words of a lone man who hung a banner over a bridge in Beijing just before the Chinese Communist Party’s recent congress: “Democracy not dictators; citizens not slaves”. Many held up blank pieces of paper — a wordless, silent protest. Most media gave these events large and rapid coverage...

Myanmar protest in support of movement in China

In Laung Lone Township, Dawei District, Myanmar, young people staged a protest on 3 December showing their support for pro-democracy protests in China. China is one of the most significant countries for Myanmar in regional politics. Following the fall of dictatorships throughout the world in the 1980s and 1990s, China established a new type of capitalist dictatorship, which fascists all over the world are now attempting to imitate. China has only been a detriment for Myanmar since 1989. However, efforts to create a regional democracy movement without China have fallen short. In an effort to...

China: the workers and the regime

We do not know whether other factories in China have seen confrontations similar to Foxconn in Zhengzhou, where Apple iPhones are assembled. The western media has not given the workers’ actions much coverage, and while some western capitalist governments find it advantageous to highlight Chinese state, the Tory Foreign Secretary, for example, went no further than to call on the CCP government to “take notice” of the protests. The Tory and other western governments more worried about radical workers’ action spreading across China and the impact on western capitalist profits in China. The...

Action on Covid-19

France has seen an upturn in Covid cases and hospitalisations since mid-November, but low response to a booster jab drive (the government reckons only 21% of over-80s and 37% of those aged 60-79 are “adequately protected” by recent vaccination or mild infection). Covid death counts there remain low so far, and in Britain and many other countries as much concern focuses on Strep A, scarlet fever, flu, RSV, etc., infectious diseases especially hitting young children for which immunity may have declined due to lockdowns. But an ill-managed exit from ultra-lockdowns in China could create a huge...

China erupts: the workers are key

See our leaflet for 10 December Foxconn / China democracy solidarity protests here . The last four weeks have seen the biggest working-class revolt in China in 33 years. There have been illegal street protests and occasionally pitched battles with security police in major cities — Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Wuhan, etc. Shaken by the street protests from Ürümqi, capital of Xinjiang, in the west to Shanghai in the east, the Chinese government announced a climbdown, lifting the ultra-lockdowns under which workers were locked in their apartments or, as in the huge Foxconn factory...

China rebels for democracy

Street protests across China followed the death of ten people in a fire in a block of flats in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang (East Turkestan, the Uyghur region) on 24 November. Protests in Urumqi itself, and in many other cities across China in the following few days, said that the ten had died because Covid curbs stopped them fleeing the fire. As of 29 November, the protests had ebbed for the time being, but they represent a new peak of an agitation building up for months. On 13 October, just before the ceremonial Congress of China’s ruling party which would reaffirm the cult and the authority...

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