In one year's time China will formally announce its emergence on the world stage as a powerful, prosperous and modern nation with a spectacular party attended by representatives from every nation on Earth. For the Chinese government, the Olympic Games will be the culmination of two decades' work stretching back to the original bid for the Games in the year 2000. And China's current leaders are determined that the political mission initiated by their predecessors, to make the Olympics both an international success and a source of pride for the Chinese nation, will be completed on time and without a hitch.
China Labour Bulletin, as a Chinese non-governmental organization dedicated to improving the lives and working conditions of ordinary people, too hopes that the Games will be a success, but cautions that an excessive focus on this one event could distract the nation from the increasingly serious social and economic issues it should be dealing with.
"The whole process of gaining, preparing for and hosting the Olympics has become highly politicized, and there is a danger that the government's mission to demonstrate its greatness through the Games could over-shadow and divert attention away from the problems the Chinese people have to contend with every day of their lives," said CLB Director, Han Dongfang.
"The Chinese government should not exclusively focus on the short-term and limited goal of a successful Olympics, but use the coming year to begin to make a serious attempt to resolve these issues," he added.
Some of these issues, such as the appalling health and safety record of Chinese construction sites, are directly related to the Olympics. The construction workers who built the Olympic stadiums and support facilities, and completely overhauled Beijing's transport system in readiness for the Games, are almost exclusively migrant labourers who work in extremely hazardous conditions, usually have no labour contract, no work-related medical insurance, cannot form a trade union and have no right to collective bargaining.
However these problems are by no means confined to the construction industry. The number of accidents and fatalities in the coal mining industry has decreased from the horrendous highs of 2004 and 2005, when about 6,000 miners died each year, but there were still, according to official statistics, 1,066 accidents and 1,792 fatalities in the first half of this year alone. Moreover, the majority of these incidents occurred in small-scale illegal mines, precisely the kind of operations most likely to cover-up and conceal accidents. The State Administration of Work Safety claimed on 14 July that it had uncovered 46 coal mine accident cover-ups in the first half of the year, which suggests many others remain covered-up and that the actual death toll is much higher than officially acknowledged.
In factories across China, workers are forced under threat of dismissal to work in hazardous, even life-threatening conditions. In gemstone-processing factories where dust concentrations exceed permitted levels and visibility is down to one meter, workers have to operate equipment without any form of silica dust protection; to complete order contracts, many workers in toy factories are forced to do overtime until they faint at their machines or even die from exhaustion. In these factories, bosses often illegally confiscate identification papers to prevent workers from quitting or running away when they cannot take any more, and many factories withhold most of workers' monthly wage packets, allowing them only pocket money.
These conditions are commonplace all over China, but it seems the government only takes action when specific outrages are brought to public attention by an outside agency. Following the Playfair 2008 report in June this year, which exposed the use of child labour at factories producing official Olympic merchandise, the Beijing Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG) revoked the license of one company and suspended three others. While CLB appreciates BOCOG's prompt response to the revelation of abusive labour practices at its licensee factories, we strongly urge the government not to simply "cut and run" but to seriously address the needs and concerns of workers. Instead of merely punishing employers caught in the act, the government should give workers the power to protect their own interests by granting them the freedom to organise their own unions and the right to strike.
Domestic clampdown
However BOCOG's response to the Playfair expose is very much in keeping with the government's heavy-handed approach to potentially embarrassing labour issues over the last few months. On 29 June, more than 3,000 workers at the giant Shuangma Cement Plant in Mianyang, Sichuan Province, downed tools and went on strike to protest against the company's proposed severance package. The response of management and local government to the strike was to seal off the town, surround the plant with police and remove all internet postings related to the dispute.
Likewise when news emerged that the entire workforce of the Jinzhou bus company in Liaoning had gone on strike on 19 July, bringing the town to a standstill, the authorities did not address the drivers' concerns over pay and privatisation but merely blocked all news related to the strike. By contrast, the rescue of 69 miners from a flooded coal mine in Henan at the end of July was given extensive national coverage and portrayed in the official media as a miracle, without any analysis of how the miners became trapped in the first place. Blame for the accident was put on nature, rather than man's abuse of it.
The intensification of news management in the last few months has been obvious to all; while foreign journalists have been told they will have unfettered access to all news stories in China during the run up to the Games, domestic journalists have been warned not to report "false" (bad) stories, their movements have been restricted, and critical blogs and websites taken down. Even the most innocuous criticism has been punished. At the end of July, two high school teachers in Hainan were given 15 days administrative detention for posting song lyrics critical of local officials.
All this does not bode well for the coming year. If these domestic controls are maintained, how will petitioners or protestors arriving in Beijing be treated? Will this traditional avenue for seeking redress be allowed any public expression at all in the capital next year? And how will other "unsightly" problems be dealt with? Will migrant workers who built the Olympic stadiums and support facilities be forced to return to their home towns? Will other social undesirables, beggars and the mentally ill be removed from the streets?
The need for openness
It seems from the evidence so far that Beijing is more concerned with image management than dealing with the underlying causes of its problems. CLB hopes however that during the coming year the government will take precisely the opposite approach. Instead of trying to conceal the less flattering side of China in order to protect its own image, the government should grasp the opportunity presented by the international media spotlight to openly discuss the real problems facing the country. If the Chinese people and the global community could better understand these issues, everyone including the government would be in better position to resolve them.
The problem of child labour is an obvious example. Statistics related to child labour in China are designated "highly secret," and apart from occasional highly publicized crackdowns on employers the government has done little to address the problem. If however the use of child labour is brought out in the open and the government encourages the active involvement of all sectors of society in tackling the problem at its root, the greater the chances are that child labour can be checked and reduced in the future. Moreover, the government for its part should take urgent measures to reform the rural education system and provide sufficient funds to ensure children stay in school, thereby cutting off the supply of child labour at its source.
In addition to the state's chronic underinvestment in education, public healthcare has declined to the point where millions of ordinary workers' families cannot afford to seek medical treatment or risk crippling debt if they do. While the supreme health and fitness of the elite will be celebrated during the Olympics, the overall health of the nation is declining at an alarming rate. There are state of the art sporting facilities all over China - private gyms, swimming pools, tennis courts and golf courses - but only the very rich can make use of them. The majority of people have limited or no access to such facilities.
As Han Dongfang points out, "A vast amount of money has been spent on the Olympics so we hope they will be successful, but we cannot ignore the fact that while the nation's capital city holds an international celebration of youth, physical strength and vitality, the health of the nation as a whole is in peril."
Noting that the Games will begin on the eighth day of the eight month of the eighth year, a particularly auspicious date in Chinese culture, Han added: "We hope that the opening date of the Olympics will signify good fortune for the people of China as a whole and not just the privileged few. The Chinese people will be faced with deeply ingrained problems for a long time after the Olympic closing ceremony, and it is the government's responsibility to deal with those problems."