[R-G] China Steel Executive Killed as Workers and Police Clash

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Normally, the Western mass media love the stories of any old conflicts
-- from electoral disputes to ethnic conflicts to even workers'
uprisings -- in Southern nations of interest to the West, but they
don't appear to find this story* so amusing, as is suggested by the
terseness of the report.  That is not surprising.  Shortly before this
incident in China, "Workers at collapsed French car parts maker New
Fabris threatened on Sunday to blow up their factory if they did not
receive payouts by July 31 from auto groups Renault and Peugeot to
compensate for their lost jobs" (12 July 2009,
<http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSLC42677020090712>).
 It could happen here. -- Yoshie

* <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/asia/27steelchina.html>
July 27, 2009
China Steel Executive Killed as Workers and Police Clash
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — China’s state-run press confirmed Monday that a riot broke
out at a steel mill in north China Friday evening, leaving the
executive of another steel mill dead.

The report, in the English-language China Daily, provided few details
on the mayhem, but a report on Saturday by a Hong Kong-based group,
the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, which broke the
story on the riot, said that at least 30,000 workers were involved and
that about 100 people were wounded.

The riot, at the Tonghua Iron and Steel Works in Jilin Province in
northern China, broke out after a visiting steel executive from a
related company threatened mass layoffs at the Tonghua steel mills as
part of a major restructuring of the state-owned company, China Daily
said.

The riot followed a pattern of massive demonstrations that have taken
place in various parts of the country over the past few years, many
involving citizens outraged over government corruption or threatened
with layoffs or orders to relocate.

The China Daily report said Chen Guojun, the steel executive who was
beaten to death, had threatened 3,000 Tonghua steelworkers with
layoffs, which he had said could take place within three days. He also
had signaled that larger jobs cuts were likely at the struggling steel
mill.

The report said the rioters blocked the police, ambulances and
government officials from reaching Mr. Chen before he died.

Mr. Chen was general manager at Jianlong Steel, a large, privately
owned company based in Beijing. Jianlong had acquired a large stake in
Tonghua, a state-owned company with as many as 50,000 employees, and
Jianlong was working to restructure it.

The China Daily report quoted a police officer identified only as Wang
as saying, “Chen disillusioned workers and provoked them by saying
most of them would be laid off in three days.”

The officer also said that Mr. Chen’s warning that 30,000 jobs would
eventually be cut to 5,000 “infuriated the crowd.”

China’s steel industry, the world’s largest, is just beginning to
recover from a sharp downturn that took place in the second half of
last year, forcing many smaller mills to halt production.

The government has been trying to restructure and consolidate the
steel industry, which is seen as inefficient and plagued by
corruption.