A-Infos (en) Floating Worker

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Another first for a-infos. Up until now we never published extracts 
from _The Raven_ here. We'll stop if they are not wanted. This one is 
taken from the latest edition (due out) on The Americas and China. 
This article was translated from the French.

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Tseng Fan-Kouo who we met one afternoon in Lou Hsun Park in Shanghai,
began by telling us how he washed up in a bistro in his area of town
and slept in the kitchens. A former peasant who had become a floating
worker he wouldn't tell us how he had ended up in Shanghai. After a
few questions he launched into a breathless monologue as though he was
frightened he wouldn't have time to say it all. Then, with his parting
phrase, he ran off without even saying goodbye.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - Has it been long since you left the country?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - More than a decade. But it feels like a century.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - How did it happen? Did you decide to go?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - It's hard to say in retrospect. As always there were
personal and more general reasons. In my village suddenly some
families were able to have land and to retain some of their produce
and this caused great divisions amongst the peasantry. Some of us,
like myself, soon found ourselves excluded. In theory any family had a
claim to an allocation as soon as they had enough hands to work it and
in such a way as to produce what the state demanded. In actual fact
the die was cast from the off. It was those families in the villages,
who already had some power, who were given the confidence of the party
and who were given land rights. After two or three years some families
had enriched themselves and had some money to take on workers. So the
choice I had was to sign up with one of these farms with the risk of
vegetating for the rest of my days, never having the money to get
married etc. or to get the hell out.
 I had already been to the main local town a few times and, as with
 all those of my age, I was much taken by the crowd, the noise, the
 music the shop windows... When I think back now, after having seen
 some of the biggest cities in China, it was as nothing: the main road
 wasn't even tarmacked, a dozen or so shops... but for a young man who
 had seen nothing but his village it was paradise. Don't forget that
 these Chinese villages were just emerging from the middle ages. The
 only outside link was the radio, a travelling cinema once a month and
 that happy elite that went off for military service and came back
 full of stories... as long as they hadn't gone to Vietnam and came
 back crippled for life. Thinking about it I reckon what changed all
 that was the arrival of money. Before there hadn't been any. People
 clocked up work points which brought in food. And a lot of points
 were needed if you wanted money to get settled and build a home. In
 short the introduction of money shook up the older ways of relating
 to folk. And in a country where 80% are peasants to shake up these
 structures is to shake up the whole of Chinese society.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - But when you left you had no guarantee of finding
work?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - At those kinds of moments you don't think too hard.
You're young - willing to take a risk or two. Then there are always
the rumours. Building sites in the big cities where in a year you
could earn what you could earn in a lifetime in the village. The
stories which come back are those rarities who did come back a few
years later with a fortune in their pockets, who buy a lorry, set up a
factory and take on some hands. Stories of those who missed the boat,
vegetated or died you hear none of. You want to believe in the miracle
so you set off full of dreams.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - And the results?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - The hangover do you mean? Depends. To start with I
wasn't too far from the village and came back twice a year. I had
money. I gave it to my family.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - What work were you doing?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - Manual stuff. I worked on a dam then roads and
bridges. It was hard but you earned a fair wage. Then I wanted to
spread my wings a little. Head for the coast. I got on a ship in
Canton in 1985. The town was chaotic ring-roads, interchanges,
fly-overs. That was how they hoped to deal with the traffic problem.
In fact they totally screwed up what had been a pretty town -
particularly the centre. The area around Pearl River which had been a
pleasant place to walk was turned into a motorway nightmare. Traffic
was disrupted for months to allow for the construction of these
monsters and it didn't help a jot. At times all those new routes are
saturated, there is constant noise and pollution levels are amongst
the highest in the world. Finally, today, they have come up with a
solution: the underground. The outcome: more years of building and
congestion without mentioning all those roads built in the last ten
years which will have to be destroyed to make way for the new project.
The Cantonese are incensed by this mess, this waste of money. I heard
the same thing happened in Hong Kong. For years there were roads all
over the place before they decided to build an underground.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - It's as though there is only one version of capitalist
development with the same mistakes repeated over and over again never
learning from the past. The Chinese ruling class despite its
idiosyncrasies remains fascinated by the west. It says to itself, 'If
the west did it it is fine, good. It's modern. Let's do likewise'. It
refuses to see the problems it has caused in the west. In fact it is
the flunkey of Western capitalism. But let's get back to where you
were...

Tseng Fan-Kouo - Yes. I let myself follow it all. I got to Canton when
the building industry was booming. And the least you could say is
there was loads of work. You moved from one site to another and met up
with other folk from back home. Someone would know a site manager who
would pull strings and get you a job. We worked long hours.. The
money, higher than in the inland towns, wasn't great but it was worth
the effort.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - How do you mean?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - People have different motives. I have mine even if
they are quite common. Let's say that to start with I carried on
looking at the town through a peasants eyes. My links were still to
the country. I made my way, took care of my money and was willing to
work extra hours. I was able to put some to one side. One day in the
not too distant future I would head for home with money in my pocket.
I'd get a tractor, a 4 * 4, build, get married, settle down, I don't
know... Everything was still vague but I would do better than my dad,
wouldn't be taken for a ride, would have my own business... get by.
And then there's the effect the city has on you. When you have never
seen it before it grabs you by the scruff of the neck - all the
people, the cars, loads of products. It's like being able to shake
hands with all the people you've ever seen on the TV but who were
meaningless until you met them in the flesh. After years spent
watching the mirage you feel you are stepping behind the screen for
the first time.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - How long did all this last?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - Two years at the most. Round about 1986/87 things
started to get a little tougher. I don't know how it all started. Some
put it down to folk like me. Too many coming in to saturate the job
market. The employers used it as an excuse to be more arrogant, cut
wages, extend hours. Discipline on the sites was toughened up. Folk
were no longer allowed into town after work, no doubt because we
looked a mess. It might upset the tourists. It has to be said that
preferring to save a little we didn't spend much money on clothes. To
be sure we were still peasants - a little wild. Townies started to
give us a dirty look. Some lads who couldn't find work started to play
around. On the sites there were more and more fights. The police were
called in for any little thing and they weren't putting the gloves on.
Then there was the first riot. That was the day I started seeing
things in a different light.
 Since we were so far from home and the girls we knew there and since
 we only went back about once a year the site manager started bringing
 prostitutes in. At the time we were shacked up in army tents on the
 construction sites. The girl would come into our tent and we would
 climb on top of her in turn. I didn't like it much but did like my
 mates. They were always poor girls from the country - like us. Little
 girls who had been promised work and who ended up doing this in order
 to build the bank balance of some greedy bastard - a party big wig by
 day and a pimp by night or vice versa... and then one day who comes
 into the tent? A girl who was a little older than the rest, already
 worn out. The lads started to laugh, 'what's this old bag doing
 here?' Well the girl hit back which was when I recognised her. The
 site manager was about to give her a few slaps when I intervened.
 There was a fight. The boss ended up on the floor. I was in the shit.
 But I couldn't have held myself back. She was a girl  from back home.
 The next farm. I'd seen her around. I might have married her if I'd
 had more money. She was in the same boat as me. There she was ten
 years later. She thanked me for helping her, then left. [...] I never
 saw her again. The boss wanted to dock a months salary. He managed to
 sort things out with the pimp and still got his commission. Well from
 then on things were never the same. Having seen the girl I had seen
 myself: a beast of burden that is used and then thrown away when no
 longer needed. I became wary, introspective. I hardened up a bit
 which is perhaps why I am still here today.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - How did you get back home?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - That was what I wanted to do. I'd had my fill of
*that* lifestyle. Never mind fortune. Better go home. I missed my
family, the hills, the woods, the very land. People in towns don't
understand how we love the land. And if you are going to die you might
as well do it at home. But fate had other plans. After a stay back
home it was the town I began to miss. I had changed even if I didn't
realise it at the time. In short I decided to head back for the town.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - Still Canton?

Yes. Well nearly. Tchou-Hai, the Special Economic Zone next to Macao.
Along with Chen-tchen the Special Economic Zone which borders Hong
Kong. It was without doubt one of the biggest of the Chinese
development areas. There were cranes everywhere, rivers of concrete
and migrants coming from all over China. There was talk of 50m people
who had left the country and were floating from town to town looking
for work. Today I imagine the figure is three or four times that.
 Again I managed to find the team of pals from back home, those I'd
 been with when the girl incident happened. Since I'd dealt with the
 site boss in good style I was very welcome. I was taken on board and
 made second in command. I earned more, always hoping to get rich...
 And then, a little later, I met a girl, a migrant like me who had
 worked for a few years in the electronics factory and who, unable to
 hack it any longer, got herself a skivvy job in management. At the
 time we were always on the move. Hardly was one job done than we were
 on to the next. It was hard especially in winter.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - When it was too cold didn't you get any special
clothing?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - Who are you kidding? The rule was that it had to go
lower than minus ten. You only get that up North. But we did OK. We
kept our shoulder to it and it all went on for years until 1989/90.
>From that date onwards conditions changed once again. First off we
were asked to do more hours. We were knackered, there were accidents
all the time. You wondered if they weren't doing it on purpose to
finish with it all.

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - Were the employers Chinese enterprises?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - Well, officially yes. But we only met the middleman.
Above them were big financial interests foreign sometimes but above
all Hong Kong and Macao. And I think that was the start of it all...

Hsi Hsuan-Wou - The start of what?

Tseng Fan-Kouo - Wait a moment. What I want to say is that the
pressures on the workers are becoming harder and harder. First the
hours, then the withholding of salaries for anything at all: housing,
training, discipline. The bosses were more and more nervy. It was as
though they too were under a lot of pressure. And this pressure was
coming as a result of pressure to make money, profit for silent
partners, that is to say those right at the top, the Chinese
capitalists of Hong Kong and Macao. We approached the old unions who
were still operating in the state factories but with no joy. We later
learnt that there were secret agreements between the foreign investors
and the authorities not to allow unions in those companies with mixed
capital backing in order to keep salaries as low as possible.. In
actual fact we were a Chinese company but were indirectly linked to
the budget of the mixed companies... so no union.
 That was when we decided to organise ourselves clandestinely in order
 to put some pressure on the boss even though it was still impossible
 to act openly until we had enough support for some collective action.
 However, some resistance slogans started to spread and in this way we
 succeeded without a word being spoken to slow things down a little.
 There was also a lot of pilfering. We were seling material to sell on
 the black-market to smaller folk. It helped out at the end of the
 month. In a nutshell we started to organise ourselves. It wasn't a
 union but simply the solidarity that was generated that allowed us to
 feel our strength. The boss was aware that things were not as they
 had been and that he was having problems getting his way all the
 time. There was nothing he could put his finger on but he must have
 sensed the silent resistance we were opposing him with. Changing team
 leaders, changing teams, trying to play one group off against
 another, nothing worked. So he decided to turn to straightforward
 usury. One evening, pay day, we noted that salaries had been cut by
 20%. When we pointed this out to the wages clerk he said that the
 money hadn't been sent to the bank and that we would receive it with
 a weeks delay. In fact we waited a fortnight. Next we were expected
 to do an extra hour a day which would be paid when the project was
 finished. Then, after a series of thefts, the guard at the site was
 reinforced with a group of night-time watchmen who began to search us
 morning and night. Hooligans put there especially to intimidate us.
 The level of tension on the site rose. It only needed a spark to set
 the whole thing up in flames. Eventually it came. A simple dispute
 with one of the watchmen, a youngster was knocked about, his mates
 came to help, the watchmen took fright, one of them got out a gun and
 one of our chaps was injured. Immediately a strike was called with
 demands for discussions with the management. The company ended up
 sending a delegate who we sent back with our grievances: stopping
 hassles, withdrawing the watchmen, honouring backpay, pay for extra
 hours and so on. To start with the boss seemed to give way but in
 fact he was buying time in order to get the support of the
 authorities. A representative from the manpower agency even came to
 tell us that our demands were legitimate but that our work stoppage
 was illegal and demanded we went back to work before negotiations
 could take place. When we refused the stakes were upped. The police
 who were sent to intimidate us were jostled and quickly lost their
 self-control. Sensing they were losing control of the situation and
 that it was threatening to snowball the authorities immediately
 called in more police who wheeled in the heavy guns. Although there
 were only about a hundred of us they surrounded us with some two or
 three hundred officers with armoured cars and who opened fire on us
 on sight. Then they rifle butted clean the building site. Six were
 killed and several dozen injured. All those who didn't manage to
 escape were arrested and put in prison for several months... that is
 the cost of taking strike action in China.


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