China: Labor: The need for an underground Christian labor movement in capitalist-Communist China

China e-Lobby instructs us on the implications of the end of textile exports / imports in worldwide trade where the role of the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC = Communist China) is paramount. The e-Lobby relates this development to the outrageously undervalued PRC currency, which profits on holding down the exchange rate artificially, instead of allowing it to float to its market-value. This means the PRC is subsidizing the bottom-basement cheap prices for textiles in American and Canadian department stores. There, due to underpricing the Chinese goods compete against the low-wage American and Canadian garment and textile workers, hitting certain ethinic groups (often immigrants) concentrated in this industry. Even worse, the Chinese product undercuts the very low prices of the very poorly-paid textile industires of other Asian nations.

But more than that, China does not permit a free labour movement. The puppet labour organization is an anti-worker instrument of the state. At the same time, China represses several religions, permitting only state-directed denominations of Christians, Buddhists, and others to function - they having "registered" with the state. Unregistered groups, on the other hand, are growing massively underground, in conventicles, as church history used to call underground Christian groups meeting in secret. In China, in the case of illegal Christian assemblies and evangelization, often the groups meet in houses, called appropriately "House Churches." There are multiplied millions of Christian believers in China, unregistered and meeting in House Churches. Undoubtedly, there must be at least a few of them are already active in the underground free labor movement. May God grant them strength and increase their number, and work thru them and others for a democratic labor movement in what's now Communist China. And may the vision of a distinctly Christian union take root and prosper there.

Now, in my version of Christianity, informed by the European experience, Christian churches should encourage Christians who want to follow Christ in all of life, to develop Christian labour unions to enter a new tone into labour relations, a tone based on Gospel social principles. Such a movement exists in Europe, Latin America, and other continents, including a sturdy minority union so founded in Canada, the Christian Labour Association of Canada. A very small companion union is struggling to develop itself in the USA.

Since in Communist China, free labour organization is a vocation that involves tremendous sacrifice, no one can enter into it without counting the cost. Still, the Gospel, when it faces the conditions of labouring people under the capitalist-Communist yoke in the PRC, calls for the generation of an All-China Christian Labour Association. One of its chief tasks is to work co-belligerently with other groupings in struggle for better working conditions, more equitable pay, days off, and all the things that add up to a loyal and healthy body of employees for any company. But, also, in doing so a Christian labour union in Communist China will immediately come up against the state, and would not be able to avoid the vast dimensions of such a task - not only in regard to organziation and negotiation with employers, but also in calling publicly for the end of slave labor that is integral to the new capitalist-Communist economic system. - Owlb


Check out these revealing sources compiled and commented on by China e-Lobby. I've tried to live-link all the external sources of the set of items selected below; if you click-up an item online, you can navigate to other sources referenced on earlier e-Lobby editions and marked in each case by "fifth," "third," etc, so you can find the particular labour-related item in the sometimes long list of items for each day's edition. Some of these live links are sheer dynamite to anyone who hasn't really been following what's behind China's economic explosion. - Politicarp

October 25, 2005 12:13:13 PM EDT

International Labor Organization notes, but discounts, Communist textile surge: The report published by the group found that “China's share of the global (textile) market has grown by 3% to 16% since January when global limits came to an end” (BBC). Despite the cheery comments, the ILO “was unable to give an exact figure on the number of jobs that had been lost.” What nations were part of the lost 13% of market share was not discussed (see also fifth, fourth, second, fifth, and third items).
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January 5, 2005

Quotas on imported textiles end, PRC likely big winner: A worldwide set of trade restrictions on textiles came to an end Saturday, causing tremendous worry among both American textile producers and foreign producers not named Communist China.  There is one rather slim silver lining – longtime PRC rival India is also expected to do well in the post-restriction environment.  Reports: BBC, Washington Post
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May 12, 2005

Communist China won’t revalue its currency: The Communist mouthpiece People's Daily announced that the regime would “revalue the yuan next week” (BBC), but the Communist central bank denied it, and the paper later issued a correction. The deliberately devalued currency – called the yuan or renminbi – has greatly damaged both U.S. manufacturing and the export sectors of America’s allies in Asia.

On Communist prison labor camps: Tim Luard, BBC, examines the state of Communist China’s labor camps, and the plight of those sent inside them.
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May 14, 2005

U.S. imposes restrictions against Communist textiles: A surge in textile exports from Communist China that followed the end of worldwide textile trade restrictions (fifth item) could be stemmed by new restrictions by the Bush Administration to “limit annual growth in Chinese imports to as little as 7.5 percent a year” ( Washington Post. U.S. textile firms were not alone in struggling against the Communists’ combination of union-less wages, prison workers, and the artificially cheap currency (fourth item); “Central America and Bangladesh were preparing for devastating competition from China.”
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August 18, 2005

No textile deal: Talks between Communist China and the U.S. on the former’s surge in textile exports to the latter “ended Wednesday night without a deal” (United Press Int’l via Washington Times) on stemming the tide [seems to have been updated September 29, 2005 - Owlb]. The Communist China’s textile exports surge comes after worldwide textile trade curbs ended on January 1, and is crowding out several developing nations in the process (fifth, fourth, second, and fifth items).
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Many thanks to J D Maguire who keeps China e-Lobby going and up-to-date! - Owlb, Politicarp, Anaximaximum, and Owlie Scowlie, the gang writing and researching for refWrite,