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[Note: The dates given are slightly different across the first few reports. There is also a CLB report---which I have quoted at the end---which says workers from the mill marched in 2010. The description in that CLB report, though, seems so similar to the others below, that I am inclined to believe that CLB report had the year wrong. If there are readers who know that a SECOND round of unrest occurred in 2010, please write to me!]

From Minsheng Guancha via Boxun:

民生观察获悉，从3月29日开始，河北省保定市依棉集团爆发大规模工人罢工事件，数千职工先后围堵在依棉集团大门口。直到今天，据现场工人向民生观察透露，仍有三、四千工人们在厂门口罢工抗议，而依棉集团包括退休工人近万人都行动起来了，昼夜保护工厂。

据了解，保定市依棉集团属国有大型企业，职工最多时有近万人。2004年，依棉集团进行改制，卖给了香港中策集团，后中策集团又成立项目公司—亚纺企业。该厂职工在这次改制过程中大批“买断”下岗，剩余三、四千人继续上班。近期，保定市依棉集团工人获悉，他们工厂马上要不存在了，三、四千在职职工只保留几百人到中国纺织工业部设在保定管辖县内一新厂继续上班，其余几千人将全部裁员，从而引爆这次依棉集团全厂员工罢工抗议事件。

现在，依棉集团工人昼夜坚持在厂内，不让人拉走工厂机器设备，不让人拉走工厂其它物品，不让外人随便进入。虽然到今天保定市政府派出一名副市长在厂蹲点，并派出工作组进行厂内，但工人们提出的诉求未获正面回应，大家表示将继续抗争。

在这次已持续数天的罢工抗议活动过程中，工人们还提出了保定依棉集团此前的种种问题，并对保定依棉集团总经理汪丽娟表示强烈不满。工人们主要反映下列问题（相关文件附后）：

1、国有资产流失的问题。工人们认为几个亿的资产，不可能说没就没了；2008年底有人秘密清理库存，四五千万的库存几日之间不见了，买家是谁，谁经手卖的，卖了多少钱不详。在职工中传闻以极低的价格卖的。同样还有花园、幼儿园是谁卖的？三布场又是谁卖的？还有其他子公司分公司呢？作为依棉职工质问：这笔笔交易谁受益了，存在转移资金吗？存在着腐败、违法吗？

2、在改制的过程中，职工经济补偿金被拖延、未发放等问题，依棉职工质问：“2004年我们全厂的人均安置费、补偿金是2万元，有35年工龄的是3.5万元，有12年工龄的，特别是1986年以后参加工作的，是8940元”“2004年3月31日我们已经与河北保定依棉集团有限公司解除、终止劳动合同，至今已5年，经济补偿金为什么还没有支付？违法吗？拖欠经济补偿金5年的补偿金又是多少？

3、改制时资方承诺注入的五千万美金未到位问题；工人们质问：“改制5年来中策集团亚纺企业投入5000万美金的资金到位了没有，如果没到位，并购成立吗？改制成立吗？我们企业的土地产权到了谁的名下？是不是存在着骗资、国有资产流失？ “

4、2004年改制后职工们的上千万的养老金未获交纳、拖欠问题；从保定住房公积金管理中心查询自2004年4月至今，保定依棉集团未给职工缴纳公积金，工人们问：“扣着我们的保险金却不给我们按期缴纳保险，拖欠职工上千万的保险金，保定依棉集团法人或法人代表是否违法，有没有挪用公款？

5、在职职工工资低于保定市最低月工资750元问题；

6、工人们股权利息问题；

7、工人未获夜班津贴问题等等。

Also from Boxun:

河北省保定市依棉集团上周五因劳资纠纷引发大罢工，工人抗议当局将工厂卖给港资企业后，在进行大裁员的同时拒付相关补偿，全厂数千工人，走投无路，包围工厂，防止资方转移设备。现场一名工人星期三晚对本台表示，行动已持续五天。自由亚洲电台特约记者乔龙的采访报道

爆发大罢工的是保定依棉集团，数千名工人近期获悉将面临遣散，与资方发生纠纷。上周五，数千工人开始罢工，直至星期三晚，抗议还在持续。据现场一名工人当晚告诉本台：“现在还罢着呢，全厂人都罢工了，现在就有四千来人，乱了套了，当官的太‘黑’了，把厂卖了，把宿舍也卖了，把人也卖了”。

另一位工人表示，现场人山人海，愤怒的工人把工厂围个水泄不通。虽然当局未出动防暴公安，但派出大批便衣人员到场了解工潮动态：“现在好多警察都是便衣，我们根本认不清谁是职工，谁是便衣，二百多人吧。公安由我们厂职工的家属认出来了”。

记者：这两天有没有人被抓？工人：目前还没有。

本台致电中共保定市委办公室，接听电话的工作人员以习惯的语气回答记者“不清楚”。

记者：依棉罢工的事情，现在怎么样了？工作人员：哦，我不太清楚这件事。您这样，明天上午找宣传部联系一下好吗，我不太清楚这件事。

记者：下午你们有人去现场了吗？工作人员：我不太清楚。

据民生观察报道，保定市大型国有企业依棉集团2004年进行改制，并将全部资产卖给香港中策集团，后中策集团又成立项目公司--亚纺企业。该厂职工在这次改制过程中大批被“买断”工龄下岗，剩下近四千人继续上班。近期，工人获悉，工厂马上要不存在了，三、四千职工只保留几百人到保定管辖的县内一新厂上班。

据一位有三十年工龄的老工人表示：“04年买断（工龄）时，他们说卖给香港中策集团，卖的时候他说给咱们工人钱，卖了之后钱没给，都不让我们上班了”。

工人说，他们担心资方转移设备，自发组成护厂队，不准任何人运走机器和工厂物资。

另一位工人表示，当天下午保定市政府派出一名副市长前往与工人谈判，但未达成协议：“市领导来了，也开过会，也（和工人）讨论过。但是，能解决的问题远远不是四千职工的心愿，因为根本就没有回答实质性的问题，也没有解决工人的问题。”

工人吕先生表示：“政府跟他们（资方）穿一条裤子，解决不了问题，弄不清，我是04年买断（工龄）的，失业的话，我连这碗饭都吃不着，做临时工的话，我都五十多岁了，一天挣个三十（元），连一顿饭都吃不上”。

记者：您有多少年工龄？吕先生：我是七六年参加工作的老工人。

民生观察报道，在持续数天的罢工潮中，工人们还提出了保定依棉集团此前的种种问题，包括国有资产流失的问题。工人们认为几亿元的资产，不可能说没就没了；2008年底有人秘密清理库存，四五千万的库存几日之间不见了，买家是谁、卖了多少钱不详。

工人还质问，在改制过程中，职工经济补偿金被拖延或未发放，2004年3月已经与依棉集团有限公司解除、终止劳动合同，至今已5年，经济补偿金为什么还没有支付？诸如此类的许多问题都没人回答。

以上是自由亚洲电台特约记者乔龙的采访报道。

From Boxun:

民生观察前天（2009年4月1日）发布了河北省保定市依棉集团全厂职工罢工抗议的消息，今天我们又获得这一事件的最新进展，今天上午，这个厂工人正集体游行，前往北京请愿。

据上午正在路上的一位工人告诉我们，今天上午八点多，工人们就从厂门口出发，以步行的方式游行前往北京请愿。到上午十点半左右，我们通话时，工人们已到达107国道，在路上的工人已达二、三千人，到中午十二点多，工人们仍在前进的路上。

据了解，从3月29日依棉集团全厂职工罢工以来，保定市政府虽然派出包括一名副市长在内的工作组进驻这个厂，并与工人们进行了对话，但谈判未有结果，工人们提出的要求并未得到积极回应。据上午十点半的消息，虽然游行人数众多，但工人们并未堵路，当局也暂未采取行动。

保定市依棉集团属国有大型企业，职工最多时有近万人。2004年，依棉集团进行改制，卖给了香港中策集团，后中策集团又成立项目公司—亚纺企业。该厂职工在这次改制过程中大批“买断”下岗，剩余三、四千人继续上班。近期，保定市依棉集团工人获悉，他们工厂马上要卖不存在了，三、四千在职职工只保留几百人到中国纺织工业部设在保定管辖县内一新厂继续上班，其余几千人将全部裁员，从而引爆这次依棉集团全厂员工罢工抗议事件。

工人们同时还反映了保定市依棉集团国有资产流失的问题、职工经济补偿金被拖延未发放问题、企业改制问题、在职职工工资津贴股权等等问题，工人们要求政府派出审计组对依棉集团资产全面进行审计。

From Mao Flag via Boxun:

连续七天，河北省保定市依棉集团爆发大规模工人罢工护厂斗争，为防止资方转移设备，数千工人包围工厂，昼夜守护。

造成这次全厂员工大规模罢工的原因是：数千名工人在上月底获悉，工厂被偷偷卖掉，但工人都不知道，该厂三、四千在职职工只保留不到一百人到中国纺织工业部设在保定管辖县内一新厂继续上班，其余的工人将全部裁员

现在该厂每天都有三、四千工人在厂里轮流值班守厂保护资产，不让资方往外拉机器设备，也不让外人随便进入。大家都是自发组织的，没有领导组织，加上退休的工人有七、八千人，愤怒的工人把两个厂区门口都封了，现在保定都封锁消息，不让公开。现在当地政府已派一位刘副市长带队的工作组进厂蹲点，也派出大批便衣警察到场监控工人的维权动态。

该厂还挂了工人的抗议横幅，上面写道：“还我一棉 严惩败厂坏人；强烈要求中央派工作组审计依棉；誓死捍卫老一棉人创下的伟业。”为此事，较早前有两千多工人还曾自发到市政府请愿，当局抓了几个工人，并拘留他们15天才释放。

据悉，保定依棉集团是具有50年历史的老企业，2003年在职职工9,021人。该企业2004年进行改制，以零资产将100%股权出让，以“整体打包出售”的方式，由香港中策集团整体并购，后中策集团又成立项目公司——亚纺企业。

该厂原有七个亿的资产，现在是一无所有，厂子卖了，钱不见了。2008年底有人秘密清理库存，四、五千万的库存几日之间不见了，买家是谁，谁经手卖的，卖了多少钱不详。该厂拖欠在职职工经济补偿金5年了，养老保险多年不交。现在资方和市政府都无法解释清楚工人提出的问题。现在工人很彷徨，不让资产迁走卖掉，他们没办法再出去找到工作，都四、五十岁人，谁要他们?

依棉人：保定依棉集团的黑暗内幕

保定依棉集团是具有50年历史的老企业，2003年在职职工9021人。八十年代初的十几年中，马恩华厂长以“拼搏”精神，改变了企业面貌，争创了全国一流业绩；在马恩华的带领下，经过１０年的艰苦奋斗，使企业达到全国同行业一流水平，主要经济指标连续７年名列全国同行业１０强，１９９４年实现利润居全国同行业第一。

汪丽娟总经理上任后，以又一个十年带领我们走向“新的辉煌”—2004年以零资产将100%股权出让，以“整体打包出售”的方式，由香港中策集团整体并购。

当年描绘的美好未来：分离优良资产实现海外上市, 并以依棉为平台 , 并购 3-5家国内纺织企业 , 争取 5 年内使 “依棉” 年销售额达到 15 亿元, 把依棉打造成中国纺织业的 " 旗舰 " 企业。

结果：改制5年了，承诺并购后三年内累计投入约5000万美金没落实，依棉集团土地产权却改成私企了。拖欠在职职工经济补偿金5年了，养老保险多年不交⋯保定依棉集团总经理王丽娟太忽悠真不厚道。

下面代发职工部分疑问，请政府和有良知的官员们答复和解决问题。请朋友们帮助。让大家评评她是不是太忽悠真不厚道。

1. 依棉集团以“整体打包出售”方式, 由香港中策集团整体并购（来源：保定日报。2005年05月19日 09:02 国资委网站）。中策集团成立项目公司—亚纺企业 ，中策集团亚纺企业将分批投入5000万美金的资金使企业获得良性发展。（2003年12月15日依棉集团利用外资参与企业改制设立外商独资企业方案）。香港亚纺认同依棉发展战略，承诺并购后三年内，累计投入约5000万美金用于企业发展。（来源：在外资整体并购改制中履行工会职责 ）。作为依棉职工我们想问：改制5年来中策集团亚纺企业投入5000万美金的资金到位了没有，如果没到位，并购成立吗？改制成立吗？我们企业的土地产权到了谁的名下？是不是存在着骗资、国有资产流失？

2、“外资企业要象我们原来国有企业那样，要继续缴纳员工“五险一金”，你外资如果不承认这一条我根本就不能同你谈，这在合同书中，在法律上已经确定下来了，请大家放心”（2004年保定依棉集团执行董事邵兵在党员代表做谈会上的讲话）。

2004年改制至今我们职工的工资条上显示养老保险、公积金个人应缴部分按月正常缴纳。而从住房公积金管理中心查询自2004年4月至今保定依棉集团未给职工缴纳公积金，2004至今我们也从未收到过养老保险缴纳回执单。作为依棉职工我们想问：扣着我们的保险金却不给我们按期缴纳保险，拖欠职工上千万的保险金，保定依棉集团法人或法人代表是否违法，有没有挪用公款？

3、 河北省劳动和社会保障厅文件—冀劳社[2008]46号河北省劳动和社会保障厅关于调整最低工资标准的通知 ，河北省最低工资标准及实行地区 ：保定市月标准 750元（2008年7月1日起执行）。

保定依棉集团有限公司劳动合同书第三十七条（二）甲方支付乙方的工资报酬低于当地最低工资标准的，要在补足低于标准部分的同时，另外支付相当于低于部分百分之二十五的经济补偿金。

作为依棉职工我们想问：目前依棉集团工资低于最低工资标准的员工不少，这合法吗？

4、河北省劳动和社会保障厅文件—冀劳社50号 —河北省劳动和社会保障厅关于调整提高企业岗位津贴、夜班津贴标准的通知：二、夜班津贴标准。轮班性生产、作业岗位：前夜班（含20点以前上班，20点至24点工作4个小时或接近4个小时）10元/班；后夜班（0点至8点上班，工作4个小时以上）12元/班。前夜班和后夜班连续上班超过10小时的，20元/夜。六、本通知所列各项津贴不计入最低工资标准。 本通知从2008年8月1日起执行 。

作为依棉运转班职工我们想问：为什么保定依棉集团截止到2009年3月还未执行新标准，仍然执行中班1元夜班2元标准。这合法吗？

5.“我们现在全厂的人均安置费、补偿金是2万元，有35年工龄的是3.5万元，有12年工龄的，特别是1986年以后参加工作的，是8940元（2004年9月21日《依棉文化》上保定依棉集团郭书记讲话）。”“在目前国家的政策上就规定对于员工债务，无论这个企业走到什么时候，第一优先清偿的是员工。对于每个员工的补偿是要履行法律责任的，如果我们不去履行，就是在犯法，这是一个最基本的判断（2004年9月保定依棉集团总经理汪利娟在劳模标兵座谈会上的讲话）。”

作为依棉职工我们想问：2004年3月31日我们已经与河北保定依棉集团有限公司解除、终止劳动合同，至今已5年，经济补偿金为什么还没有支付？违法吗？拖欠经济补偿金5年的补偿金又是多少？

6、2004年3月31日我们已经与河北保定依棉集团有限公司解除、终止劳动合同。而河北保定依棉集团有限公司是原保定第一棉纺织厂改制而来。作为依棉职工我们想问：都改制两次了，为什么原保定一棉纺织有限责任公司的股权款（董事长：马恩华 执股会代表：任跃珍 ）还不归还？

7、2008年底有人秘密清理库存，四五千万的库存几日之间不见了，买家是谁，谁经手卖的，卖了多少钱不详。在职工中只是传闻以极低的价格卖的。同样还有花园里幼儿园是谁卖的？三布场又是谁卖的？还有其他子公司分公司呢？作为依棉职工我们想问：这笔笔交易谁受益了，存在转移资金吗？存在着腐败、违法吗？

8.成立北京服装公司，聘请法国设计师开服装厂和专卖店，聘请宋扬出任总经理让如许多的资金打了水漂这个责任由谁负责？

依棉人希望用自己的微弱的声音唤起那些有良知的知情人和政府官员的警醒，不知道在国企改革的路上，有多少像依棉一样国有企业，被那些权利在握的人转移资产，有多少国有资产流入个人的腰包，可怜的工人们只要有一口饭吃，谁也不会没事给自己找事，可怜的依棉人自从2004年4月1日开始至今，都不知道自己在给谁打工，公司领导一再承诺，不会让这些重新和公司签订合同房的人吃亏，可是5年过去了，这些职工工资没有长，中夜帖和最低工资也一直没有执行国家政策，让广大网民说说看每个月六七百元的工资怎么生活，尤其是那些双职工的家庭，两个人加起来只有一千三百多块钱，孩子要上学，一家人要吃饭，现在的物价不用说大家也知道，哪一个月，甚至是哪一天不都是在精打细算，不然到月底就没钱吃饭了，汪利娟还说什么：“谁们家没点存款，不开工资就不过年了？”的话多伤人心啊，可怜的工人们就是这样也没有说什么，合同上明明写着每月20日之前开支，可是没有一个月的工资是在20日之前开的，就连春节这个月的工资，也是在1月24日才能开的，工人们还是没有说，可是现在真的是让这些老师的工人们不能不说了，1994年老厂长马恩华去世前说过，“就现在这样，我的工人两三年不开工，大家也能开支。”，然而十五年过去了，工厂没有停产，可是工人开支都成了问题，三布、绒织、尚衣坊......那么多的地方，设备都卖了，多年积存的原棉卖了，库存卖了，可是钱到哪里去了？工人的养老险、失业险、公积金几年没交，工人的集资款也不归还，今年甚至连集资款的利息都没有发，马上工人们连这几百块的工资都快没有了，你说让这些工人怎么办？

From Epoch Times:

For seven consecutive days, workers at the Yimian Group in Baoding, Hebei Province, have staged a large-scale strike. In order to prevent the new buyer of the company from moving out the equipment, several thousand workers surrounded the factory, and stood on watch day and night. According to workers on the scene, the strike was still going on as of April 3. Some workers have gone to Beijing to appeal for readdress of the injustice. Although the local authorities sent an investigational group to the factory, that didn’t remedy any of the issues.

Yimian Group is an old enterprise with a 50-year history. In 2003, the company had 9,021 employees. In 2004, in a re-organization, all of its shares were sold to the Zhongce Group in Hong Kong. Subsequently, Zhongce Group established a specialized company called Asian Textile Enterprise. After this re-organization, a large number of workers were laid off, with only four thousand being retained.

The reason for this large-scale strike was because several thousand workers learned at the end of last month that the company has been secretly sold, but no workers had been told anything about it. Only about one hundred of the nearly four thousand workers will be retained to work at a new factory in Baoding county. The rest will all be laid off. Since last Friday, almost ten thousand workers, including those already retired from Yimian Group, spontaneously went to the factory to watch over the equipment.

The workers disclosed many illegal transactions before and after the reorganizations, including severe loss of state-owned assets. They explained that after the reorganization five years ago, the promised $50 million investment in three years after the buy-off was never made. For five years, the payment for employee compensation was delayed, and the retirement insurance also has not been paid.

Workers stated that the factory originally had $700 million in assets, but now has nothing. The factory has been sold, and the money has disappeared. Now the new buyer and city government cannot or will not answer questions raised by the workers about these transactions.

One worker, Mr. Liu, told this reporter, “This strike has been going on for seven days. The bosses of the factory terminated the contracts with workers for no reason, and halted the production. The factory has been sold. Those bosses swallowed up all the money, and now the workers have no way to make a living.”
Another worker said, “We are protecting the factory. The leaders planned to sell all the equipment, but the workers protected the factory. Everyone from eighty-year old retirees to young workers and old leaders all came out to ask for justice. Now is the peak time of the strike. Workers are especially angry.”

“Every day there are three to four thousand workers taking turns protecting the equipment, and preventing the buyers from moving the equipment,” he said.

Mr. Liu said, “The city government sent an investigation group to investigate and maintain order. However, their true responsibility was to monitor the situation. There are many plainclothes as well as uniformed police outside—nearly 200 to 300 people. We dare not to go in and out freely because we are afraid of being arrested. Now Baoding is blocking the news of the strike, not publicizing anything.”

When an Epoch Times reporter called the city government of Baoding to inquire about the strike, a staff person there dismissed the call, saying that he is not aware of this matter and that any interview should be directed to the Propaganda Department.”

From CLB:

Two major strikes over the last two weeks have shown that some local governments and managements have still not learnt important lessons from the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at the turn of the century.

The protests at the state-owned Golden Emperor Group textile plant in Chongqing’s Fuling district on 13 and 14 April, and the former state-owned Yimian textile factory in Baoding, Hebei, in the first week of April erupted for precisely the same reasons as in the majority of SOE privatization disputes a decade ago: wages arrears, inadequate compensation for lay offs and the misappropriation of assets by management.

In Chongqing, nearly all the factory’s 5,000 workers went on strike, with more than 2,000 holding a mass protest at the factory gate, and more than 300 workers staging a road blockade that resulted in extensive tailbacks, after the enterprise announced its bankruptcy and reorganization plans. The workers, who had not been paid for three months, were protesting at wage arrears and a redundancy offer of just 630 yuan for each year of service at the enterprise - less than the monthly minimum wage in Chongqing municipality.

In Baoding, several thousand workers staged a three day strike and mass demonstration at the factory gate, and then attempted to march up the highway to Beijing before the vice mayor of Baoding stepped in to mediate. The workers were complaining at the non-payment of economic compensation and pension benefits promised when the enterprise was privatized and sold to a Hong Kong-based company in 2004. The workers further claimed that nearly 500 million yuan worth of assets mysteriously disappeared at then end of 2008 and remain unaccounted for.

From People's Daily:

Authorities in north China's Hebei Province fired the Party boss of a local textile factory after more than 1,000 workers went on a protest march over privatization, job cuts and other grievances.

The decision to remove Wang Lijuan from the position of Party secretary of the Yimian Group, was read out by Lan Baoliang, head of the organization department of the Baoding City Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), at a workers rally Saturday morning.

Wang was replaced by Zhang Yanru, chief of the Baoding City State Assets Commission. The board of directors also suspended her jobs as the chairwoman.

More than 1,000 workers of the group began a 140-kilometer hike Friday from Baoding city to Beijing to protest the malpractices ofthe management.

Background from Liang Wendao of China Worker (original link no longer available):

This article is written based on the data gathered on the internet on the topics of “workers from Yimian on strike to protect their factory”, “Hong Kong Strategic Holdings Ltd” and “Reconstruction of the Baoding Train-station”. Unfortunately since it is not possible to contact the workers of Yimian directly, and due to limitations of ability and time, the content and views of this article are largely based on existing data on the event and logical deductions made from them, so a lot of the details cannot be confirmed. Therefore this author cannot state that the article completely and genuinely reflects the entire event, but it is safe to say that it won’t be far from the truth. It is hoped that when the readers finish the article they will have the same kind of feelings as the author: The Working Class of Baoding, We are fighting together with you!

“In this gamble(speculation), little fishes are engulfed by sharks, and sheep are engulfed by the wolves of the trading centres.” – K. Marx

After the occurrance of this “strike incident at Yimian” the press both within China and abroad immediately showed immense interest. But the behaviour of the parent company of Yimian - China Strategic Holdings Ltd (SH Ltd/Hong Kong) was very strange indeed. Openly it showed no consideration at all, it neither attempted to respond to the accusations nor sent its management to calm the workers down. The only thing we see is that the management layer led by Wang Lijuan and the Baoding city government were extreme busy and tried numerous ways, perhaps including back-stage deals made between SH Ltd and government officials above and below.

Without an understand of the history of SH Ltd, we would not know the essence of this event. In the 1990s the No. 2 heir of the Jinguang Group in Indonesia, a 2nd generation Indonesian Chinese, Huang Hongnian, bought a Japanese trading company in Hong Kong and created SH Ltd. In the 1960s Huang Hongnian studied at the 26th Middle School in Beijing and was once a Red Guard who worked in the rural areas of Shanxi province. After returning to Indonesia he inherited his family’s wealth and went to the US to study. The person is very knowledgable about the conditions of mainland China and possesses a large number of personal connections there.

Apart from Jinguang Group which is the largest stockholder of SH Ltd, The Hutchinson Whampoa Property company of the wealthiest man in Hong Kong, Li Jiacheng, Morgan Stanley from the United States and the Itochu Corporation from Japan all hold consider amounts of stock within SH Ltd. Since the 1990s and the initial formation of SH Ltd, it has engaged in the purchasing of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from mainland China. The usual methods are to buy 51% or more of the stock of a SOE at a low price, and then “re-package” the bought enterprises before placing them on the overseas market or selling them directly to other multi-national corporations in order to receive huge amounts of profits.

In the mid-1990s, SH Ltd was quite famous, and was praised by the government and the mainstream media as the “shining example of SOEs attracting foreign investment”. Within 2 years SH Ltd bought 300 or so SOEs. In 1994 SH Ltd bought Beijing Beer Factory, and in less than 2 years time, it was sold to the Asahi Beer Corporation of Japan and became the “Beijing Asahi Beer Corporation”. One of the main stockholders of SH Ltd - Itochu Corporation of Japan, is also the parent corporation of Asahi Beer. Now all of the beer produced at Huairou in Beijing are actually beer made by the Beijing Asahi Beer Corporation. After this, SH Ltd managed to hold onto 51% of the stock for the Hangzhou Rubber Factory and 55% of the stock for the Taiyuan Double Happiness Company, and taking advantage of the differences between the accountancy regulations in China and the West, created a new “China Tire Holdings Corporation Ltd”. After this new company is placed onto the North American stock market its shares were sold to Western shareholders, enabling SH Ltd to acquire hundreds of millions of USD of profits.

In 1993, SH Ltd bought “en masse” 41 SOEs from Quanzhou and from these created the “Zhongqiao” Group. It promised to invest in 240 million RMB, but after just 2 years and a total invested amount of less than 20 million RMB, it sold the group to an ethnic Chinese enterprise in Malaysia, the “Falin Group”, for more than 200 million RMB, and from this acquired a profit of 200 million RMB. Of course the “Falin Group” is not all that benevolent either, after taking away most of the higher quality capitals from Zhongqiao (mostly land assets), in 2003 it declared that Zhongqiao could not be managed, and after 2 or 3 years of turmoil, in 2007 the Quanzhou city government had no choice but to re-nationalise Zhongqiao, but in reality at this point Zhongqiao is already bankrupt, and tens of thousands of employees were fired and became unemployed for several years. Just the amount of salaries, social securities and compensations that were withheld by Zhongqiao and never given to the entitled workers amount to tens of millions of RMB. Apart from Quanzhou, SH Ltd also attempted to purchase “en masse” dozens of SOEs in the city of Dalian, and this was also agreed to by the Dalian city government. However, due to various reasons this plan never came to fruition. Later on Huang Hongnian transferred some of the stocks of SH Ltd to Mr. Chen Guoqiang from the Mianxing Group in Hong Kong, and Mr. Chen is also a higher capable buyer of state-owned assets on the mainland, as well as being a good friend of Li Jiacheng, the richest man in Hong Kong. He now controls a series of enterprises in southern China, especially in the city of Shenzhen. In 2008 SH Ltd planned to purchase the middle-sized coal mines and related railways in Inner Mongolia owned by the China Railway Construction Group Corporation Ltd, and through manipulation of its own shares within the Hong Kong stock-market, managed to obtain a profit of tens of millions of HKD.

By now, everyone should understand that the “progressive strategies” of SH Ltd is simply to purchase SOEs at low prices and sell them at high ones. This is why after SH Ltd buys a SOE, it usually does not change the management layers of the ex-SOE, because it has no interests in actually running the company, and it is on the contrary easier to obtain profits by keeping the old bureaucrats in. In 2003, SH Ltd entered into negotiations with the state-capital assets committee of the city of Baoding, and afterwards through its company called “Asso Ltd” registered at the British Virgin Islands, it purchased Yimian Group in Baoding with a price of zero. “Asso Ltd” is an “empty shell” company that only has an official emblem and name, even on the Virgin Islands its registered address is probably only a postal box.

“Asso Ltd” promised at that time to invest 50 million USD in just 5 years, but this is no more than an empty promise, and is not even written into the written contract. But spokespeople from “Hong Kong Asso Ltd” stated that after purchasing Yimian, it will advance the level of the traditional manufacturing techniques using modern technology, re-organise the internal resources of Yimian, establish a well-constructed legal representative structure, and adopt scientific methods of encouraging work. It also stated that it will seperate out the good-quality capital assets from Yimian to establish itself onto the overseas stock-market, and with Yimian as the platform, purchase another 3 - 5 mainland Chinese textiles enterprises, and try to raise the trade volume of Yimian to 1.5 billion RMB within 5 years, so that Yimian becomes the “flagship enterprise” of the Chinese textiles industry. Yet since this promise was officially made in September 2005, it is still just an empty set of words hung on the official website “Window of Commerce in Baoding”.

According to the annual reports for the stockholders of SH Ltd in 2005, in November 2004 SH Ltd released a memo, the content being the plan of using 200 million HKD to purchase Asso Ltd’s released stocks and all of its sub-companies, including Yimian Group in Baoding itself. But since no formal contracts were signed before the official expiry date, the memo no longer has any legal status.

According to this report, from 2004 onwards SH Ltd has already decided to withdraw all of its financial links with Asso Ltd, and let it run as an independent entity. In fact, SH Ltd was even prepared to sacrifice Asso Ltd completely. Now we cannot say that right from the start of the purchase SH Ltd never intended to enact its promises, because the initial contract signed was fundamentally no different from the previous “China Tire Holdings Corporation Ltd”. Perhaps SH Ltd intended to purchase another 2 or 3 state-owned textile enterprises similar to Yimian in Baoding at a price of zero, and combine them together into an “Asian Textiles Group”, to be sold when the international stock markets are rapidly on the rise. This way the contract is nominally fulfilled, and hundreds of millions of USD can also be acquired. This is also why despite the repeated inquiries done by Yimian workers on why of the promised 50 million USD of investments, less than 10 million USD actually arrived after 5 years, and the management layer neither offered an explanation nor a solution, since the planned 50 million USD of investment was for 3-5 different purchased SOEs, and therefore the money for just Yimian itself is “already sufficient”. It is quite certain that the management layer of Yimian headed by Wang Lijuan is actually quite clear about the reality of the situation, and since the boss has changed, they must obey the new board of executives, not least because they now take salaries in USD from the new boss. This is also the reason for keeping the original management layers, on the surface there are no big changes and all of the original connections are still in place, but in reality the core has been completely transformed.

Yet “fate” it seems does not follow the will of man, in 2007 and 2008 the international “subprime mortgage bubble” bursted and the economic crisis arrived, the European and American stock markets were devastated. Within China since 2004 major discussions around MBO and the restructuring of SOEs began, and faced with more than 20 years of capitalist restoration, radical leftist ideas are beginning to make a come-back among the masses. The opportunities for “getting a free lunch” are diminishing more and more, and within the textiles industry competition is fierce. In 2007 the amount of tax returns for textile exports decreased, and all of the textiles enterprises lost a lot of their competitive power. In 2008 and 2009 there is also the “wind of crisis” around the entire globe. Faced with such dire circumstances, Asso Ltd (or Yimian) has neither the hope of being put onto the stock market nor the possibility of being sold off. Neither the buyer nor the management layer wants to really manage this enterprise. Therefore SH Ltd has decided to run away from the site as fast as possible. Now the only valuable asset left in Yimian is land itself.

Mass theft – the “mystery” of land in Baoding

“The premise of land ownership rights is such that some people monopolise a part of the earth, and establishes it as a territory in which only his own will is obeyed and all other people are rejected. Under such a premise, the key is to explain the economic value of such a kind of land monopolisation on the basis of capitalist production, i.e. how such a kind of monopolisation is realised on the basis of capitalist production... ...from the perspective of a higher-level socio-economic mode, for a few people to privately own land is as ridiculous as for an individual to privately own another person. --K.Marx

Before we return to the issue of the Yimian Group, let us first look at a few other cases. From May 2005, the workers from the Baoding Datang electrical factory repeatedly went to the local authorities to protest as their residences were being illegally taken down and corruption was wide-spread in the enterprise itself. In March 2009, the workers from the First Shoe Factory of Baoding went to the local authorities to protest as a result of being opposed to the plans of relocation of their residences due to the re-construction of the local canal system. We cannot describe these in any detail in this particular article, but it is sufficient to know that such cases are common in Baoding. So what is the secret of the land assets belonging to Yimian?

According to the official website of the Hebei provincial government, the reconstruction and enlargement of the Baoding train station has began. The reconstructed train station is planned to take up an area of 82 acres, around 6 times that of the present train station. The total investment for this project is around 6.87 billion RMB. The new station will have a front entrance that faces westwards. At present 6 factory zones belonging to 3 different enterprises, amounting to some 14,000 square metres of housing and other structures, are already being dismantled. The Baihua market that has already been dismantled will be the location for the main square of the future train station.

The secrets of the land assets belonging to Yimian are to be found here. Yimian, or the First Cotton Factory, is a very old enterprise, its factory buildings and residences for workers are located on either side of Dongfeng Road and Xiangyang Avenue in western Baoding. From the present Baoding train station to the factory zones of Yimian is no more than a few kilometres of journey in a westward direction. From the rural trading markets at Baihua Road it is much closer to the location of Yimian still. Once the new train station and its main square are constructed and have the front entrance pointing in a westward direction, then the current location of Yimian would become a “platinum zone” where “each inch of land is worth an inch of gold”, since it would be so close to the new train station. According to internet sources, at the moment the average land usage fee in the urban areas of Baoding is around 1 million RMB per acre, and according to the official website of the Hebei provincial government www.hebiic.gov.cn, in the project transfer documents for Yimian published in 2003, before Yimian Group was sold off to Asso Ltd it had a total area of 497,412 square metres or around 750 acres, so even at the present land usage rates the land assets of Yimian would be worth 750 million RMB in total.

The SH Ltd only invested in 70 million RMB at most, but if the land assets can be sold than at least 700 million RMB can be acquired. Of course SH Ltd would not be able to get all of that, but most of it would no doubt go to SH Ltd. If SH Ltd waits for the land usage rates to go up, it might acquire a profit margin several times 700 million RMB. If they don’t sell the land assets but dismantle Yimian completely to build commercial shopping centres and private accomodation, then the amount of profits gained might be dozens of times more than 700 million RMB. From this we might even estimate that SH Ltd would be happier if the production at Yimian becomes more difficult to continue, so that they can sell-off or dismantle it in a more straight-forward manner. To make it appear that all possibilities are considered, the management layer of Yimian actually proposed a potential plan to “retreat to the city sub-urbs”, but rather than Yimian being responsible for the relocation of all of its employees itself as it should be the case, it is just a scheme to sell-off the “high quality capital assets” of the company to another SOE “Zhongfang”, so “Zhongfang” would be responsible for the relocation of the hundreds of employees of Yimian.

The SH Ltd has no real intention to engage in the textiles industry at all, and since it plans to retreat and sell-off the land assets, the best way to do so would be to process away the fixed capital assets and facilities at Yimian, worth tens of millions of RMB, as simple industrial waste. This way “Zhongfang” would get quite a lot of things very cheaply, and it will perhaps even take part in some of the economic benefits when the Yimian land assets are sold-off in the future. To nominally take responsibility for several hundred workers would just become a “hand-waving ceremony” for “Zhongfang”. After 4 years, a minority of Yimian workers and facilities would again become a part of a SOE. From this one would certainly have sufficient justification to ask the state-capital assets committee at Baoding: if this is to be the final outcome, why didn’t the government assign Yimian to “Zhongfang” 4 years ago straight-away? This way the re-location of all land assets, factory buildings, facilities and employees would be conducted by “Zhongfang”, wouldn’t this be the easier and more cost-effective option since both companies are SOEs? This way how could nearly 10,000 employees be laid out in two waves during these last 4 years? How could hundreds of millions of state assets being stolen away so easily?

Another strange thing is that the state-capital assets committee of Baoding must have known about the plans to expand the train station in 4 years time, since a huge reconstruction project taking up 82 acres of land and costing 6.87 billion RMB of funding certainly could not just be a short-term response towards the recent economic crisis, but a relatively long-term plan. As long as the land assets of Yimian are still there, just selling off the land could enable the corporate owners to receive hundreds of millions RMB, so how could it be that Yimian was sold-off to foreign capitalists who had absolutely no prior experience in the textiles industry in the name of “mismanagement”? The real answers to these questions are not really hard to come by at all, they are all based on the private interests of SH Ltd and some people in Baoding itself. Yet in all of these considerations the interests of the 10,000 or so workers at Yimian are never considered, and the interests of the Chinese people are never considered either.

Of course, the secrets of the land assets of Yimian don’t just stop here. After the 1949 revolution, under the Maoist planned economy, “to have the factory as one’s home” is certainly not just an empty slogan. Up to the 1990s and the complete domination of the neo-liberal market economy in China, most of the large and medium-sized SOEs in urban areas are usually a combination of factory zones, administration zones and residential zones for the workers of the particular SOEs or “work-units”, and the older and grander the enterprise, the more so this is the case. Accompanying this is the clear consciousness of people belonging to particular “work-units”, that is to say, they consider themselves to be part of certain collectives, rather than atomised individuals, and this consciousness is present not only among the workers themselves but also their families and children. The inter-personal relationships between people also begin from acknowledging the “LOGOs” of their respective “work-units”.

In the past this was certainly the case for Yimian, the First Cotton Factory, considered to be the best SOE in the western sub-urban region of Baoding. Around the factory zones on either side of Xiangyang Avenue and Dongfeng Road are spread a vast area of residential zones for Yimian workers. Tens of thousands of people link up their fate with their factory over the period of dozens of years. For some families two or three generations of people work in the same factory, and are proud of this fact. As a good example of a “mini-society” within the SOE during the era of the Maoist planned economy, Yimian used to have its own electricity generation facilities, its own technical colleges, hospitals, secondary schools, primary schools and even nurseries. A Yimian worker could be born in the Yimian hospital, get educated in the Yimian nurseries and schools, graduate from the Yimian technical colleges, work in the Yimian factories, and finally rest in peace inside Yimian hospital.

His or her entire life would be completely connected with the Yimian enterprise, and every step of his or her life-path would be stamped on with the logo of Yimian. Here we shall not discuss whether or not this kind of thing is correct intrinsically, but certain in practice for tens of millions of Chinese workers, this scenario is a fact of their life. For them, the “enterprise” is also the “home”, “the factory is the home, and the home is the factory”. To lose their factory is to in some ways to erase the most distinguished phases of their lives, and to destroy the meaning of their existences as “social man”.

This is even more so the case for the “best factory in the western sub-urban region of Baoding”, the Yimian Group that was once written into secondary school textbooks and glorified as the “great factory of Ma Enhua”. This is testified by the fact that after hearing that the “Yimian of Baoding would be no more”, a large number of citizens from Baoding and the surrounding regions travelled to the site by vehicle transport to offer their sincere lamentations. For ex-Yimian workers who now have to work more than 10 hours a time and look after two or three assembly lines simultaneously, for ex-Yimian workers who now have to survive on selling trinkets by the roadside and wade through refuse, the total disappearance of the last remaining vestiges of Yimian, is like the complete collapse of the last remanents of their psychological pillars at the depths of their minds. They would no longer belong to a collective with an illustrous history, now they are just one after another scattered individuals who are “weak”, in other words they are no longer anything substantial anymore.

According to records, the old factory zones of Yimian were mixed together with residential zones, as well as numerous supplementary facilities. Generally speaking it would take more than an hour to walk across the entire Yimian region. Apart from the 750 acres of Yimian land that were sold-off to SH Ltd, the residential areas for more than 10,000 Yimian workers (these were privatised prior to the selling-off of Yimian, so are not counted as a part of the 750 acres of Yimian land assets) would take up an even great area of land. This is another huge amount of wealth in itself.

Judging from historical experience, for property developers that can “reach up to the sky”, to dismantle the atomised residences of grass-roots masses would be as simple as toppling a dead and dry tree. As long as the Yimian logo no longer exists, as long as they can completely empty out Yimian, then the ex-workers of Yimian would no longer have anything to rely on. The mutual identification among former residents would gradually fade away, and by then through methods of terror, offering incentives and divide-and-rule, it would be very easy to take down the living quarters of a few unemployed workers. At the moment there is already a lot of dissent over the forced dismantling of old buildings near the Western Garden zones next to the train station, the forcefully relocated people compare the violent relocation of themselves to the actions of “feudal” and “fascist” governments, and slogans of protest are put up on the entrance and exit passages of the train station itself. After the residential zone of the Baoding Datang Electrical Factory was dismantled in 2005, the workers still have not received any kind of proper relocation. In a city with extremely high housing rents, how could these forcefully relocated unemployed workers find a place to call home?

From all these considerations we’ve made so far it should be easy for the reader to understand that the Yimian workers are not only consciously or unconsciously protecting their factory, even more so they are protecting their very homes. They are not just protecting their own “little homes”, but also the “great homes” of the tens of thousands of residents in Baoding at large. As long as the factory at Yimian exist, the 10,000 workers of Yimian would have some kind of symbol for solidarity and co-operation. This would also mean that the giant projects for the dismantling of residential housing in the surrounding areas would not be able to go ahead in any smooth way, since the great Yimian factory zones are effectively in the way of their schemes. But if the existing remanents of Yimian completely fade away materially and spiritually, then the lost souls of the ex-workers and their relatives would have no choice but to go their seperate ways. By then, it might even be the case that under the hypocritical great banner of “reconstruction of the old city to benefit the nation and the people”, the people of western Baoding would fall into immense sufferings so that a few individuals could plunder at will.

At this point we should remind people to re-read this passage from the ancient Chinese text Guoyu. Nearly 3000 years ago, the king of China, King Li of Zhou, liked to “monopolise benefits”. This king who “guarded against the speech of his own people more than he did against floods”, wanted to take the natural products of the regions for himself rather than sharing them with the people. (According to modern Marxist analysis, this was in the very early feudal epoch of China when the class society was not well-established and there were still significant elements of “primitive communism” in the sense that a lot of the “natural products” of the land, like animals and plants, belonged to everyone for free rather than just to the king and the ruling class) One of his ministers rebuked the king: “These beneficial products are created by Nature and contained within Heaven and Earth. Everyone should be able to partake in them, so how could you monopolise everything? Even if an ordinary man does such a thing, the public will name him as a plunderer. If the king of the country does such a thing, very few people will support you politically. But the king did not listen to this advice. Three years later, the king was forced to abdicate and was sent away to the city of Zhi.” This was the first documented class struggle in Chinese history. It occurred in 841 BCE.

Determined Struggle – “The Fighting Songs of the Working Class”

Strikes are the military academies of the working class, they are trained here and are prepared here to enter the unavoidable great struggles of the future; Strikes are declarations of the various sections of the working class declaring themselves to be a part of the great workers’ movement. -- F. Engels

Under the banners of “reform and opening-up” of capitalist restoration, in the last 30 years or so the “market chariot” of neo-liberalism seemed to have the ability to run-over everything. Sometimes I think how our descendants would think of us: capital assets measured in the thousands or tens of thousands of billions RMB, and the fruits of labour made by hundreds of millions of people over decades are being totally shamelessly engulfed by speculators, and tens of millions of ordinary people are placed under heavy exploitation. Yet despite all of this over the last period most of us have said nothing, and have acted like lame sheep waiting to be slaughtered. Indeed, how could such things be described just by the word “shameless”?

We should thank the working class of Yimian, for without their diligent struggles, another great banquet in which state-owned assets and people’s wealth are taken-over would successfully conclude. These workers blew the horns of fight-back, and their struggles have paved the way for the ordinary people and the working class to self-organise and attack privatisation from below.

(All of the information listed below originate online, including websites like Tianya and “the Windows of Baoding”. These sources cannot be independently verified but should be largely accurate with respect to the original events. Therefore all of them are included below)

Since the Spring Festival period at the start of February this year, when the management layers of Yimian Group sent out the signal to sell-off their factories, the workers and retired ex-workers of Yimian have already begun the plans for fight-back. Starting from early March, one could see a few public letters written by workers on websites and forums. From the content of these open letters one could deduce that they are the product of careful preparation and discussion. These letters contained several key issues: the promised 50 million USD of investment by SH Ltd, the pensions and social securities that the enterprise has failed to pay for the workers over the last 4 years, the un-paid compensations for the thousands of laid-off workers in 2004, the tens of millions RMB of savings made by workers in the past that were appropriated, as well as personal problems of the manager Wang Lijuan herself. Yet unfortunately workers have not put the land issue into the open letters, perhaps because they are worried about the possible consequences, or maybe they thought in practice the land would belong to either the capitalists or the bureaucrats, and the workers cannot receive benefits from them either way. Yet they do not realise that as long as Yimian can be kept, just the current values of the land assets of the factory zones would be sufficient for all Yimian workers to receive their pensions, and they could also sue SH Ltd for breaking their initial promises as well as stealing fragmentary assets (small parcels of Yimian land and storehouse goods) from the enterprise. (This will also touch on the savings of the workers that were taken away)

Some people with ulterior motives declare online that the 2000 RMB put into the savings sum by every worker weren’t really savings but just stocks workers put in following the enterprise’s re-construction, and therefore should rise and fall in actual value following the profit margins of the enterprise, and earnings cannot be guaranteed. Even if this were the case, then these workers should still be considered as small shareholders of the reconstructed Yimian Group. At a rate of 2600 RMB per share, the Yimian workers possess a stock value amounting to tens of millions of RMB. In 2004, the state-capital assets committee of Baoding declared that Yimian’s existence as a SOE is a mistake, and that it should become a stock-based company in which state-owned stock are the majority and employee-owned stock are the minority. Under the circumstances in which no small shareholders are given any say in the matter, (during the reconstruction process in 2004 the conference for all shareholders held no elections, and even the conference for employee’s representatives was plagued by underhanded deals, including counting vacant votes from uncertain sources as affirmative votes) the state-capital assets committee actually dared to give Yimian assets to SH Ltd, and all capital assets of shareholders were “sold” to SH Ltd for a price of zero. Clearly this is a blatant violation of the interests of small shareholders. Since “private ownership rights” must be protected, why is it that the interests of small shareholders aren’t protected at all? Even in European and Amercian capitalist countries, these people would be punished to the extent of losing everything and be put into prison for their crimes.

If on the other hand one states that these savings are not stocks but just plain savings with a fixed revenue rate, then why is it that after SH Ltd completed its purchase, it did not pay back the original amounts put in by the workers? After SH Ltd bought Yimian, it failed to pay back the debts owed by the enterprise to its employees, just by this the thousands of workers at Yimian could sue SH Ltd for engaging in deceptive financial practices. Before the debts are paid back, workers should demand that all Yimian assets are put on hold, and as soon as the legal prosecution starts, then the purchasing process of SH Ltd would be forced to halt, so SH Ltd must either invest the promised amounts and give back the debts owed to the employees, or the nominal status of Yimian as being run solely by foreign capital with a clear-cut property ownership simply could never hold.
Unfortunately, at the time Yimian workers were probably under illusions so did not have the consciousness to enact these preparations.

As the final date from the selling-out of the factory gets increasingly near, the amount of effort workers put into propaganda also increased. From mid-March, some workers began to publicly collect together funds for their political struggles, and even many workers who are struggling to make ends meet paid in. Although each donation was only around 5 or 10 RMB, but these tiny trickles eventually formed a giant riverflow. Many medium and low-level cadres in the enterprise also actively participated, some old retired ex-workers over 80 who are respected by other workers actively participated in the mobilisation of the workers for this struggle, yet some people actually called them “old trash who are jumping out despite getting all of the retirement salaries”. At the same time workers continued to present their case to the local government and engage in spreading information on the internet. On 25 March, Yimian workers released an open letter titled “We want work, We want survival”.

From 27 March, when the prospects for discussion became impossible, workers began their formal all-round strike. All of the production lines in the factory stopped working. Virtually every worker and retired ex-worker participated in the strikes and the struggles to protect their factories. Workers closed down the factory entrance and placed it under watch over a 24-hour period, and forbade anyone to enter and steal assets. Nearly a thousand workers went to the Baoding city government to present their case. The city government sent a working team led by Mr. Liu, who is one of the vice-mayors, into Yimian, but apart from putting out lies, no further progress was made on solving the issue.

To add more pressure, apart of several thousand workers who stayed in the factory to place it under guard, starting from 2 April, more than 2000 workers prepared to enter the capital to present their case, and in order to avoid accusations of “causing destruction”, workers creatively called their march “collective tourism”. Like the “collective walk” and “collective shopping” conducted previously, this is a fine example of the great creativity of the people.

But such things terrified the corrupt officials. On the way dozens of police vehicles “guarded” their march, and a vice-mayor accompanied them along the entire path, attempting to persuade them to turn back. Yet the workers are also carefully prepared, many are responsible for providing food and water for the “touring” workers, and virtually no worker actually turned back under the constant persuasion of police and officials, apart from a few who are old and physically weak who had to go back. On the eve of 2 April, the “touring workers” entered the region of Xushui, and the local government sent in thousands of riot police and policemen to forcefully block up the Xushui part of the 107 Highway, and all traffic completely came to a halt. Many vehicles that tried to go to Xushui from Baoding were forcefully turned back by the police. After this the police continued to place 3 lines of human walls consisting of riot police, ordinary police and security teams on the way to Beijing, and temporarily terminated all electricity on the roads. Under complete darkness, “courageous people’s police” forcefully took most workers onto dozens of coaches sent by the Baoding government using electric batons under torchlight, and sent them back to Baoding during the night. Yet at the time several hundred workers stayed in the town of Xushui and refused to go back, and tried to initiate a second “touring plan” using bikes. Unfortunately due to insufficient numbers, after the local government rounded them up, they were “persuaded” to return to Baoding, and the government told them “while we consider your cases very seriously, you must still solve your own problems in Baoding.”

On 3 April, the Hebei provincial government sent people to meet up with representatives from the Baoding city government to hold talks with workers inside the factory. To show compromise, the government terminated all of the official positions of the manager Wang Lijuan, and on 4 April there was the rare occurrance of the Xinhua news agency releasing a public statement in English declaring that the party branch secretary Wang Lijuan has been fired and that workers have been persuaded to return very rapidly. (Xinhua news item: Party chief sacked after textile workers’ protest march) The vice-mayor named Mr. Liu came out and promised to solve the problems related to social securities and debts owed to the employees, and that the government will help workers to enact more pressure on SH Ltd, to implement the promised investments and pay back compensations owed, he even stated that the government will pay to help the workers to engage in legal prosecutions. Yet on the most decisive issue of ownership rights the government still holds that Yimian is a enterprise controlled solely by foreign capital under the company rubric of Asso Ltd, with a clear property relation.

A government calling itself “the communist party” actually falls down to such a pathetically low state in order to protect “the sacred rights of private property ownership”. They are not just concerned with a single “Yimian case”, but with how if this single case spreads out, how many angry waves of attempts to oppose the privatisation of SOEs would begin in China, and how the carefully planned “market economics structure” created over the last few decades would fall apart completely. This would certainly be a major problem for a “responsible” and newly emerging “capitalist world power”.

On 8 April, after the holidays during the Qingming Festival, the government work teams showed signs of paying back the savings of the employees, and the 2600 RMB owed to every worker was quickly paid back. Yet there was no explanation of where this money came from, did it come from the government or from SH Ltd? If the government paid for this, is this not another instance of state assets flowing away? For what reason should the debts of SH Ltd be paid by all taxpayers? If SH Ltd actually paid for this, then why is it that up to now workers have yet to see a single representative from the executive board of Asso Ltd making an official statement? This debt continued for several years under uncertain circumstances, and this sudden payback is also unclear. The government hopes to prevent a debate on ownership rights by doing this.

At the same time the government and the management layers began to apply the policy of “divide-and-rule” on the workers, and tried to make the workers return to work as soon as possible, and combined promises and threats towards some workers, “the urban factory zones would definitely be sold-off, for those who return to work promptly, later on the government will help them to find job positions, for those who don’t they’d have to help themselves”. Within the entrie city they even tried to apply pressure on the families of the employees through other enterprises and institutions in which the family members worked in, and told them to “look after your own relatives well, and if people from your families engage in collective action again, even your jobs will be threatened as well”. Up to now, most Yimian workers have not returned to work, but more and more are getting into a state of passive waiting.

However through the diligent struggles of the workers, they have won back quite a few things belonging to themselves. Now the workers’ struggles have entered into a state of deadlock, how would it develop further, we are taking note with intense interest, and every other socialist who cares about the fate of the Chinese working class is also taking interest. But the very fact that the Yimian workers entered into struggle previously is itself a very important and correct choice, and as a result of their solidarity, good tactics and persistance, they have already obtained some good results, and in the future based on this they might be able to achieve even greater victories. This is certainly a glorious achievement for the Chinese working class, and a small and nevertheless important victory for the Chinese working class as it counter-attacks and defeats the neo-liberal policies of capitalism.

Only through solidarity can workers with clear class consciousness have the strength to engage in struggles, and only through continuing struggles can the working class find a way out to achieve its own liberation. The final result of the struggle depends on many factors: the balance of class forces, the fighting spirit of the working class as a whole, the “arts of war” of the leaders of workers’ movements and the changes in the external environment. Limited by actual conditions, the movement would experience ups and downs, and the actual struggles also cannot achieve complete victory through just a single battle. When necessary one might need to retreat and accept compromises, and find a path to go forward again from this retreat. But temporary set-backs and compromises are not acts of surrender, but the conditions for collecting more strength, strengthening the organisation and mobilising more of the masses, and be prepared to engage in an even more important and difficult struggle in the future.

Just as Trotsky said 70 years ago when the Great Depression fell upon the world, “under the conditions of the collapse of capitalism, the masses are continuing to live a kind of harsh life under exploitation, and now (the global economic crisis in the 1930s) it is easier to fall into the depths of immense poverty than at any other period of the past. Even if the masses cannot improve their living conditions, we should still fight to defend every mouthful of bread for them...in the struggles for partial and transitional demands, workers more than ever require mass organisations, especially trade unions...every Bolshevik-Leninist should stand in the foremost frontlines of every kind of struggle, even if these struggles only touch on the most mild material interests and democratic rights of the working class.”

90 years ago Li Dazhao stated: “The world of the future will definitely be a world of red flags!” Socialists firmly believe that “one day the slogan “Long Live! the Proletariat Class” would once more echo across the highest reaches of the skies and clouds!”
The workers were stopped by government officials near Xushui county. All of them returned to Baoding early Saturday aboard buses at the persuasion of government officials.

Finally, also from CLB:

27 March 2010: Thousands of workers at Yimian textile factory in Baoding, Hebei, went on strike. On April 2, about 2,000 of the workers set off on a walk to Beijing in order to make a bigger impact. But they were intercepted by the authorities. The company had been privatized in 2004, short-changing the workers on their compensation and pension payments.