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Year 3 : The MZ Micro Library, work in progress...

 

The Rule of Law: Made in China

One of first lessons the Chinese teach us is:

In China, there is no Law or Justice.

There is Power (Nengli) and the Authority (Quanly) exercises it.

A petition from peasants to the Government asking for their rights.

This last weekend the New York Times, published on the first page the same article in two sections with the following headlines:

Unrest Rises, China Broaden Workers Rights and China Passes Sweeping Labour Law.

[http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo
. Immediately I tried to look the local press to read the Chinese version of the news and behold: there was nothing ; not a word, not a small paragraph, a hint anywhere in the main Chinese media.

Surprisingly no other news organisations reported the news on an issue of global implications, and more importantly, that affects at least 1 billion workers inside a nation that has now become the “slave-labour-camp” of the world. There was nothing on Reuters, AP or CNN despite their on going feature, Eyes on China and even on Google there was no sign of it, and refers to a labour Law, passed in 1994. A few weeks ago, the Property Law was sanctioned and it was one global media frenzy. For at least a week, the news was front page all over including the cover story in the Economist, featured in their editorial and described the law as a : not really a property law but a flawed piece of legislation, written to legalise the loot acquired in the past twenty years while it neglected the rights of the peasants”.

Give me Life , I want to eat

So, why has this labour law, been suppressed from the eyes of the Chinese people?

Some local journalist explained: This Regime simply cannot implement the new Law, after massive reaction from most foreign companies, threatening to leave China. Internally, they felt the local pressure after the numerous recent scandals of slave labour in Henan and Xanxi. They felt compelled to demonstrate at least on paper their support for the working class. Nevertheless, the reality is that this Government has no legitimacy and it is impotent to implement or enforce the Law, let alone one who will affect foreign investment, indeed their only line of survival. The situation is so feeble that last week, Hu Jintao, the number one Leader of China in a speech for the Beijing police said: - The Police must obey and act according the Party Rules. This was headlines on all the local papers. One must wonder, why the supreme commander of the mighty Red Army, has to remind the local police whose orders they must obey?

Lin Chun, a Harvard, and LSE professor, among many other scholars have written that the main threat to the present Regime is not Taiwan or the US, but the Chinese people themselves. The uprisings are on a surge and the gap between the small corrupt elite and the mass of destitute population is widening beyond control. Visibly, the number of new Bentleys, Mercedes, and glittering high rises are increasing in the streets of Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai while the desperation of the helpless massive population also soars all across the mainland.

Want to live , Not to be polluted

Apparently, this legislation as thousands of others will never see the light of day in a country where workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The All China Union Federation, is just another branch of the Party., another paper tiger. Sadly, the one billion peasants and working man, woman and children, unless they can speak English and have access to the NYT, will never even know about the Labour Law. Ironically this may be a more realistic outcome so they will not be yet deluded with another unattainable regulation, as the NYT explains the Justices System in China - Party-run courts and local labor bureaus often fail to enforce the legal rights of migrant workers, many of whom never seek remedies.

New China : The Peasants on their knees.

Unfortunately, the only real Law that presently exists in China is the Law of the Jungle, where the Plutocracy in power, viciously exploits the lives of billions that have no Law or Constitutional rights to protect them. Deng Xiaping and his reforms ensured the obliteration of all public welfare, protection of individual rights, and any political representation of the working class, and the peasantry. The reforms were cunningly designed to weaken them, as they became dispersed and powerless. A population condemned to live in China as a third-class citizen, left hopelessly and helpless without a future. As they say in China, Mei Banfa , no way out. A sad ending for the hundreds of millions that sacrificed so much in the past and now are simply left with literally nothing; no rights , no future , not even the opportunity to read about the law that would grant them a few nominal rights in this lawless land.

Silent Witness

PS: On this issue and Modern China please have a read on two books both forbidden inside the mainland but still available on Amazon, and selected bookshops:

- The Transformation of Chinese Socialism by Lin Chun

- Will the Boat Sink The Water by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao. ( this book has already sold more then 10 million copies in the black market in China) , a must read to anyone interested in modern China.

 

This Week…

This week we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our
patrons and friends who cared to visit us at our stand at Form-London. We
hope that some of you had the opportunity to see the work entitled, Miao
Miao, Hao Bu Hao... Hao, by Wang Chun, recently donated to LSE , The
London School of Economics.

This week also a historic fact is unfolding in China. The property law
was sanctioned by the NPC in Beijing, after 58 years since the declaration
of the PRC while the Regime, has refused to pass any Labour or Social Laws
to grant the minimum rights to the hundreds of millions of workers and
peasants totally abandoned by the corrupt and totalitarian Plutocracy now
in power.

This week, ITV news showed in Guandong thousands of para - military men,
brutally attacking and destroying what was left of a peasant village, with
a few helpless old men, women, and children. Traumatic scenes of
defenceless people being expropriated by the corrupt land developers
backed by the Chinese police. Regrettably, this is presently a common
practice unleashed all across China with the consent and collusion of the
Leaders of the CCP- Chinese Communist Party. One of the victims expressed
her sorrow; - Even during the times of the Emperors in China, they would
not dare to touch our land.

This week in the words of a history professor from Tsinghua University:
- They have sanctioned the property law to legalise their official
robbery, corruption, and unlawful acts accumulated in the past 20 years.

This week, The Economist editorial comments on the new law; It will not
meet the most crying need; to give peasants marketable ownership. Much
good land has already been grabbed and the new law will merely protect the
grabbers’ gains.

This week the law professor Gong Xiantian, from Beijing University called
the law, Unconstitutional.

This week the Chinese Regime and Party Officials stolen assets finally
made legal by one Illegal Act by one Illegitimate Regime.

This week one billion plus Chinese peasants and workers are being
officially stripped from all their constitutional rights and public assets
conquered through the sacrifice of 50 million brave men and women who gave
their lives for a more equitable and fairer society.

This week, Miao Miao stands alone in the streets of Beijing, betrayed and
abandoned by the unlawful plutocracy in power. Nevertheless, an admirable
people surround her, with a patriotic legacy that has seen in the past
similar violations from the ruling corrupt elite. As history has shown
us, the Chinese people have demonstrated the wisdom, strength and will to
reclaim what is rightfully theirs; it is not a matter of if but when.

This week s events may be summed up in Professor Gong s words;

- It will be a very shameful page in China s history.

 

The Power of the Powerless

This week once more, the G8 meets.

In the agenda, the top priorities are Darfur and the Environment.

Coincidently, they both have one hidden protagonist, China.

China now buys 2/3rds of the oil from Sudan and supplies 90% of the armaments to the Government. In 2008, China will be the number one producer of carbon dioxide in the planet with the top 20 most polluted cities in the world. A remarkable number of world records, coincidently to be celebrated in the sumptuous venues of the Beijing 2008, Olympic Games.

The World must be sensitive to the colossal aggregated-cost that is mounting, through the slave based production line of cheap goods made in China fuelling an internal social disaster and one environmental ecocatastrophe beyond anyone’s control, more than ever from the Chinese Regime.

My Red Note , oil by Chun Hai

Just before their arrival in Rostok, the Chinese delegation already conceded publicly, on a 62 pages document entitled, Plan to Reduce Carbon Emissions, where it states - Sorry, at the moment there is nothing we can do about the environment or the reduction of carbon dioxide. At least this time, they are being truthful.

In the last 25 years, the so-called economic growth, has indeed transformed China in many ways. It has also curtailed the capability of the CCP, Chinese Communist Party whereby presently it controls less then 20% of the GDP, with the alarming lack of popular support and political legitimacy. Yet in the present interdependent, geo-political dynamics, one must consider the dire implications of the late events in the Middle Kingdom and the Plutocracy now in power.

They have the power to sell the national assets, through unlawful and corrupt means but not the power to create a true open market based of fairness and the rule of law.

They have the power to allow unleashed environmental destruction all across the land but not the means to impose a sustainable eco friendly national policy.

They have the power to loot and this year legalise the stolen national assets (the recent passed property law) for the few on the expense of condemning one billion of its own citizens to a life of abandonment and sheer misery.

They have the power to build a colossal number of concrete and glass structures all across the main cities while expropriating the countryside and slaving millions while destroying all the social welfare system conquered by the people.

They have the power to hide behind Chairman’s Mao façade in Tiananmen Square and the Communist Party’s name but not the courage to make known their true nature and hidden self-interest. Most importantly, that in China communism is long dead, and the people have no longer any political representation.

They have the power to create economic short-term growth for the few but not inclusive national economical sustainable development for the many.

P

owerless Power, oil by Chun Hai

Regardless of the world community pleas and concern with these dire matters, there is the simple fact that the Chinese Regime cannot deliver; the Government has driven itself to a very narrow and rocky path. We already can feel the heat all across the globe; from the misery in the refugee camps of Darfur to the dead rivers and water streams all across the mainland; another by-product also made in China, from The Power that is now indeed Powerless.

 

 

For Sale : 1.4 billion People

The National Wealth, Public Funds and Infra - Structure. All included.

For Sale - Oil on canvas , 60 x 80 cms by Wang Chun

This work  from our 2007 Collection among others,will be exhibited at Form London from the 1st to the 4th of March at Olympia. For complimentary invitations please contact us at: info@artsrepublik.com

 

 

 

NEW CHINA - CLASS 101

Guizhou, 15th of January 2007

THE UNLAWFUL, UNLEASHED AND CORRUPT SELL OUT OF CHINA

Much more worrisome than any McDonalds-Sinopec deal to sell hamburgers, is the fact that foreign majors are picking off the plums in China's key manufacturing industries, and in many cases then killing the entity or otherwise harming China's chance of even narrowing the gap.

As part of reform, local governments are going all out to bring in foreign participation, especially that from major international firms, upon the theory that they are going to bring China the needed technology and capital investments, to allow China to either catch up or leapfrog, so as to close the gap with developed nations. However, their appears to be a lack of supervision and the report card is not entirely glowing across the board.

Top international companies are indeed coming in, and in the last decade have taken advantage of the dollar RMB parity (PPP factor of about 4 to 5), to snap up the top brands and key Chinese manufacturing companies for cheap. Worse yet, in quite a few cases the foreign purchser then eviscerated the acquired target in favor of their own, to eliminate competition. In more than a few instances, the promised investment and technology were never delivered, the JVs languish, and the foreign player then pushed to buy the China partner out for cheap. All in all, China lost key pieces in the competitive platform, and the hope of achieving or creating Chinese owned IP. That appears to be anathema to raising China's competitiveness.

China's equipment and machine tool manufacuring industry has about 55,000 sizeable companies, employing 15 million technicians. In 2004 sales exceeded 5 trillion RMB, with added value of 1.4 trillion RMB, and profits of 265 billion RMB. Among the players are certain strategic companies that, although not large enough to be "major enterprises," do represent the cutting edge of China's manufacturing. They represent the foundation and the hope of China-controlled industrial and technology development, and China's hope to attain world leading levels in science and industry.

In the past decade, major international players in the field have never stopped their efforts in cherrypicking the best in the field, and the results have been almost uniformly disastrous from the Chinese point of view.

1. Caterpillar - Acquired Shangong, and then turned its attention to Liugong, Sanyi Zhonggong and Xiagong. Xiagong Group has sales over 4 billion RMB, and its wheeled loaders are the top sellers in the Chinese market, with a far reaching distribution channel in the nation. Caterpillar would achieve monopoly power if this series of acquisitions go through.

2. Dalian Dianji Chang used to be China's largest power generator enterprise. Dalian Dier Dianji Chang also used to be the leading company in power generation for the metalurgy industry in China. In 1996 and 1998?, the two companies entered into JV with a Singapore company, and a big player from the UK. The deals allowed the foreign partnes to control the operations and sales channels, and both turned out to be disasters, and kept losing money, although the China side suspected that hidden income was channeled offshore. Both cases ended with the foreign players then buying up all ownership for cheap, and the now often seen refrain of "JV + Losses --> Foreign Own" was completed in a short 3 years! Years of efforts in concentrating knowhow and resources ended in total losses.

3. Xibei Zhouchen used to be the top player in China's bearings industry, and a key player supplying China's railways. In 2001, Xizhou entered a JV with the German partner holding 51%. According to the China side, the promised capital was not timely injected, but the German side made all the major decisions. After 3 years of losses, the entity was sold to the German entity, and the largest bearings company in China ended up in Western hands. Ironic was the fact that the wholly owned entity then decided not to sell bearings to the Chinese railways anymore.

4. Jiamusi Lianhe Shougeji Chang was the only company in China that could manufacture large combine harvesters, and used to have 95% of the market. In 1997,John Deere went into JV with the company, and then in 2004 it became solely owned by the U.S. entity. With such, China lost the only viable development platform in the field.

5. Wuxi Weifu was the biggest domestic manufacturer for diesel injectors. After China issued new regulations on emissions control, the company went into JV with a German company, with the German company holding 2/3 of the shares. Since then, by contract the domestic company could only manufacture products that were below Euro-II standards, with all products meeting Euro-III requirements to be made by the JV, and the R&D team was dismantled and merged into the JV. The new JV promptly raised the price of a key component injector pump from 7,000 to 13,000 RMB, which impacted the competitiveness of downstream diesel engine manufacture in China.

6. Jinxi Huaji used to be a famous supplier to China's chemical industry. Its hydrocarbon and chemical plant maintenance team at the Touping Jixie Fengchang comprised an expert team of specialists that has the most expertise in many of China's major plants across the board, an expertise that does not exist anywhere, whether in China or outside. Under the pressure of the local government, the entity was forced to put this profitable Touping Jixie Fengchang to JV with Siemens, with the German entity holding 70% of shares. Since losing this key strategic component (which was instrumental in selling equipment), the survival of the whole enterprise came into question. The shock of this transaction is still reverberating in the chemical processing industry.

7. Hangzhou Chilun Chang used to be one of China's largest manufacturer in auto and machinery transmissions, and powder metallurgy. A while back it was placed into play for a JV with 70% going to the foreign partner.

Unfortunately there is no comprehensive statistics on the strategic importance of key China enterprises being acquired by foreign players. Just as major projects require environmental review, to the extent that these leading Chinese enterprises may affect affect China's strategic development, there should be top level government review and approval before the foreign participation should be allowed.

Selling hamburgers and coffee is one thing. Giving away for cheap China's hope of catching up with the developed world is totally another matter.

2006-6-23 02:57 AM #21

New Legislation

Maybe what is required is national level legislation.

Some idea may be outlawing 1-2-3 (JV-Lose Money-Sell Out to Foreign) altogethe for enterprises determined to be of strategic value to China. So even if JV is allowed, should the venture go bust, the company must be sold back to a China entity.

of course there are nuances to be worked out. The legislature should start the thinking process making use of input from businessmen, e.g. Hong Kong businessmen can contribute. Set up an advisory forum and ask the attending members to play the devil's advocate and see if they could get around the proposed scheme. Then have the lawyers draft the actual language to make it airtight.

Losing China's strategic assets is truly a shame.

 

FORBIDDEN CITY , FORBIDDEN COFFEE

Starbucks to close in Forbidden City?
another sell out symbol of the rampant corruption in China.

BEIJING, China -- Managers of China's vast Forbidden City palace are deciding whether to close a Starbucks outlet on its grounds after protests led by a state TV personality, a news report said Thursday.
" The museum is working with Starbucks to find a solution by this June in response to the protests," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted a palace spokesman, Feng Nai'en, as saying.
The decision will be made as part of a palace renovation that already has seen one-third of its shops removed, according to Feng.
" Whether or not Starbucks remains depends on the entire design plan that will be released in the first half of the year," he said.
A news anchor for Chinese state television has led an online campaign to remove Starbucks from the vermilion-walled palace, arguing that it tarnishes traditional Chinese culture.
The anchorman, Rui Chenggang, wrote a blog for the broadcaster that Starbucks' presence "undermined the Forbidden City's solemnity and trampled over Chinese culture."
The palace, built in 1420, is a 178-acre (71-hectare) complex of villas, chapels and gardens that was home to 24 emperors before the end of imperial rule in 1911.
Starbucks opened its Forbidden City outlet in 2000 at the invitation of palace managers, or the usual Government Officials driving the black audis , while selling everything they can in China ; who are under pressure to raise money to help maintain the vast, vermilion-walled complex ; and increase their corruption funds stashed in foreign Banks.
Shortly after the opening, the chain agreed to remove its outdoor sign in response to complaints that it disrupted the antique atmosphere.

 

SLAVE NATION

Old Habits Die Hard.

 

In 2007, the UK will celebrate the abolition of slavery in Africa, after 400 years of trade with 25 million people slaved and exploited by the Empire.

In Africa, the slave trade has cursed their future … as a local tale tells the story, of how the Gods decided to punish the whole people because many Africans were trading their own flesh and blood, as slaves for money.
The Gods, no doubt must be now conjuring about what to do with China…
In Africa, slavery was mostly located on the western part and coastal cities. In China is everywhere now involving, men, women and children with over 1 billion people working in sub human conditions, to assist the profits of Nike, BP,GM,VW, Nestle(among others) … and of course to build the 2008 Olympic stadium, to glorify the present corrupt and criminal Regime now in power.

The Slave Nation has hidden under its controlled media, a state of disgrace of misery where people, with physical handicaps, with leprosy must lift stones in their backs to earn … less the 1 dollar a day.

Images ….

The world media especially CNN, BBC and the NYT are still bullish on the number of McDonalds opening in Shanghai and Beijing to feed the “fat-cats” while turning their blind eye on this colossal state of wide spread slavery, unseen on human history in the last 5000 years…
These are real people working day and night, 7 days a week, 12, 14 hours shifts, earning 1 dollar a day, with NO pensions, NO medical support, No labour rights, NO political representation… These are a helpless mass of people with no alternative but to slave themselves at the mercy at their local and foreign Masters so Wall Street and the local corrupt officials can feast themselves on the “Free Lunch of the World”, as the NYT just named China.

The UK, will celebrate next year the 200 years with a half baked apology… no talk of reparation of compensation for the millions that they killed, exploited and slaved.

And not satisfied with the misery the brought to Africa, Thy have turned their greed to China, the new “slave nation” of this century….

Workers of China Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.

 

 

SEX SHAME, SEX SLAVES... SEX CRIMES?

Special Report

On the 29thof November 2006, in Shenzhen, China, the model open city built and designed according to the ideals of Deng Xiaoping, hundreds of young women were displayed to the public as animals, chained as slaves and paraded through the streets as sub-humans. Later they were tried as prostitutes in a street public court organised by the Shenzhen Fujian Police Station. Ironically, this public display of “Chinese Justice” came from a Government that has allowed institutionalised rampant prostitution over the last 25 years. Nowadays in China there are open “brothels” in practically every single street, every single city, most of the time with “black Audis” parked outside, the official cars of the Party Leaders. Normally the establishments are owned and operated by the local officials.
That same day CNN had a special report on how a dolphin trainer from Hong Kong loved her work just a few miles away from the trial. No news organisation in the world cared to comment on this outrageous shameful “Street Court”.
In China human rights, abuses are infringed daily, on a massive scale against women, man and children while the western media conveniently keeps a “blind eye” to the ongoing abuses. Sadly, their attention is mostly related to financial matters and the so called “economic boom” choosing to protect their self financial interest and of Wall Street above a higher journalistic standards.
These pictures are a dire testament to the hypocrisy of what is; A Nation that claims to be all that its not, A Nation that hides its internal misery and numerous problems by enforcing brutal acts against its own people, A Nation that exploits humans as they were meaningless dischargeable objects, A Nation that has lost the perspective of the indelible rights to which individuals are entitled to have with respect and dignity even when they are suspects of having committed a crime.
There is a further detail about these pictures that would be hardly noticed. Intentionally the police dressed the women in yellow. In China culture the yellow colour is associated with sex… in Chinese erotic is huang se (yellow colour). The clothing was designed to demoralize and to shame the women even further. The reporter also told us, that the Party Leaders kept the pretty ones to work as their sex slaves, a well-known and accepted practice of the new rich elite now ruling the country.
Yet again, this Regime shames these poor helpless people, shames their illegitimate autocratic government, and above all else shames all of China.
The International Media, BBC, NBC, CNN, CBS, ITV, Channel4, REUTERS , AP among others … as well as the Human Right Organisations must address these grave and pressing issues. Public Courts as such are an infringement on any individual’s right. These people have no one to voice their “rights”, have no one to expose this disgraceful display of Chinese justice. In China, there is only one real act of Justice; to say YES to the Leaders.
China must be prevented carrying out these outrageous abuses; China must be accountable and explain its present hypocritical deceitful stance. Prostitution, Slavery and Human Rights abuses are indeed very serious issues, although still massively widespread and practiced all across China. From the thousands of slave based construction sites, industries (many foreign owned), unsafe coal mines to street prostitution the unleashed relentless exploitation of the helpless. It has become a way of life in the New China.
Finally, one vital question remains: Who are the real criminals? The ones who sell their own bodies to survive or the ones who trade and abuse the bodies and minds of others vulnerable beings for corrupt and unscrupulous profits?
Artsrepublik, urges all its friends and supporters to write to news organisations, members of parliament, to the European Parliament, Human Right Groups and US Congress and Senate. Please do forward these pictures and information to all those you can possibly think of who can make a difference.
This report was given to us on behalf of the local people deeply distressed by this turn of events in the hope that we could assist them to voice their outrage and sorrow towards their fellow citizens, whom they fondly called their mei mei, their “little sisters”.
Undoubtedly, The Chinese Government is the one who must be publicly exposed not its helpless victims.
www.artsrepublik.com

Below, he original letter from Mei, a local resident of Shenzhen:

Shenzhen,China 3 of December
Li Feng
The Shenzheng Police Station say: we don’t know this event, we will investigate it.
Can you imagine? They don’t know? Futian Police Station is the branch of Shenzheng Police Station, and this news was reported in a local very popular newspaper, and the event has happened for five days...
Such attitude, how could you depend them! And if they really want to do something for it, why wait until some people demurred to it.
Investigate what? They just want to seize some personal people to seal our lips. And maybe next time they will take some lessons, to abuse the prostitute in secret, that will be even terrible.
The prostitute is not a criminal, the Police Station, the government is the criminal. They violate the basic law, but they have no concept of human right, they only have concept of power, power means everything. Our common people have no human rights, if there are some, that is because they give us, not because we posses at birth, so they can deprive these rights from us at any time.
Face the power, our law so soft; face the weaker, our law so strong, so strict.
There must be some different voice from the international organization, must let our central government realize the gravity of the problem, to promise such thing never happen again!
China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recently. "Since China is currently in violation of almost every article of the covenant, we hope its decision to sign indicates a change in human rights practices," said Sidney Jones, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.
Mei

DUMP TRASH, ADD SCAVENGERS, MIX AND GET A BIG MESS

Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

Scavengers sifting through the trash recently at Shanghai's largest dump, which is bigger than Central Park.

SHANGHAI, March 28 — Song Tiping, a peasant from rural Jiangsu Province, and Bernie Kearsley-pratt, an Australian executive, would not at first glance seem to have much in common, and they do not, except for one thing: both were drawn here by the unlikely financial promise of garbage, towering mountains of refuse that attest to this city's status as a raging boomtown. And now they spend their days in a cat-and-mouse game, Mr. Song joining throngs of poor Chinese scavenging in the trash and Mr. Kearsley-pratt, who manages Shanghai's largest municipal dump, trying to keep them out.

Zhu Feixiang, 46, leads a band of trash pickers from Anhui Province. "We don't steal," he said. "We don't rob. We only make a living."

The Australian, who works for a French company that is helping manage this city's garbage, says his difficult job is made all the harder — indeed on some days he himself would say impossible — by the cruel fact that even in the heartland of a booming China, peasants can make far more money collecting plastic trash bags, tin cans and the rubber soles of shoes than they can as farmers or ordinary day laborers.
Most days Mr. Song, who came to Shanghai seeking a way to pay the hefty tuition fees for his eldest daughter, who had been admitted to one of the country's best high schools, spends several hours dodging monstrous earthmoving equipment in the landfill, one of the largest in Asia, to pick trash.
Were it not for dangers of the job, like being crushed by a bulldozer, inhaling noxious gases while wading knee-deep in fetid refuse or being beaten by warring gangs of scrap pickers for the mere prize of an unbroken bottle, it might even be considered a good job.
" We worked really hard as laborers before, doing 12- to-15-hour days for a mere few hundred yuan," about $35, Mr. Song said. "You have to work even if you are sick or tired. Here we are working for ourselves, and there is a lot more freedom — four to five hours a day, plus we can earn a lot more."
Each morning, on average, 6,300 tons of garbage arrives by barge from the central city. Mr. Kearsley-pratt's company, Onyx, won an international bidding competition in 2003 to replace an old municipal landfill next door, which had observed almost no environmental precautions, with a state-of-the-art dump — a fenced-in area slightly larger than New York's Central Park. To do so, Onyx has invested millions of dollars in heavy equipment, environmental measures and training.
The plan was for a plant that would safeguard the water table and produce enough natural gas to power a small city — in short, the cleanest, safest, most modern landfill imaginable — until the scavengers showed up. They came in ones and twos, like Mr. Song and his wife, and in roving gangs, organized according to their place of origin in the poor and far-flung Chinese countryside. Now, according to all sides in what appears to be a mounting dispute, what they have is one fine mess.
" Everyone has a big challenge when they come to China," Mr. Kearsley-pratt said. He warmed to his subject slowly, talking about how no living-room couch, no matter how abused, would ever make it from a Shanghai curbside to his dump, because someone needier than the owner would quickly haul it away.
Finally, he got to the meat of the problem: the scavengers who descend each day upon his dump like freebooters on a diamond mine. "As soon as you tip the truck there will be 40 or 50 people running all about the machines — quite big machines," he said. "I don't have the statistics, but quite a few people have been crushed like this."
Under the circumstances, tempers sometimes flare. With darkness approaching, as crews of Mr. Kearsley-pratt's workers in hard hats and orange jumpsuits rushed to lay enormous sheets of blue tarpaulins over a flat field of freshly laid garbage to discourage the pickers from coming onto the grounds at night, a female scavenger in her 50's approached a group of foreigners taking pictures of the scene.
" We are just trying to make a livelihood, to eat," she shouted. "Unless you have come to help us survive, we don't want your attention."
All about, as Mr. Kearsley-pratt looked on helplessly, scavengers were loading their day's haul onto pushcarts, onto rickety wagons hitched to the back of motorcycles to be sorted out offsite and sold to buyers who specialize in different kinds of refuse, whether rubber, plastic, aluminum or tin.

 

LETTER FROM BEIJING

China Open Market & Closed Streets

Now is 4:30 in the afternoon, somewhere in the outskirts of Beijing. The daily ritual of the common people to go out and buy their daily vegetables, rice and piece of meat supplied by the thousands of peasants that infiltrate the city in the early hours carrying the goods on their back, bicycles or the traditional flying pigeons(tricycles).
In China, these people have absolutely no means to sustain themselves and their families but to sell what they can on the streets …
As I walked by the customary open street market, a bizarre scene shocked me. A government blue truck stood in the centre of the street with a policeman on top harassing the population as wolves attacking defenceless sheep. Men literally were pilling goods into the truck stealing all they could from the peasants; potatoes, pieces of meat, vegetables … the truck was being loaded with the loot by twenty odd thugs dressed as policeman, and enforcing the so called Chinese Justice. One elderly man decided to protest and it was immediately surrounded by six men half his age, beaten and forcefully pushed inside the police car; his terrified wife also in her seventies, bravely tried to stop them and was thrown struggling into the van. These people have no one to protect them, no law, no justice … they are helpless in face of a monumental social catastrophe named New China.
Everyone around included myself starred bewildered at the scene feeling powerless in face of so much brutality and injustice. A daily reality for hundreds of millions Chinese excluded from the so-called economic miracle fuelled by corruption, misery, and foreign capital.
Last night I watched Hu at the Opera with all the so-called Leaders enjoying the spectacle in the lavish hall, surrounded by the elite, with no trace of the common people. Early in the day, I was browsing a bookshop and looking at photographs of Tiananmen in the earlier days full of Chinese common people celebrating their country watching an Open Theatre and a thought came to my mind … When did we last witness the Chinese people at Tiananmen Square? I guess it was in 1979 and we all know how Deng treated them …. In the New China, the streets are “closed” for the commoners; it is only open for the ones with cars, and enough money to be in business with the Government. Today, on the streets the common people are at risk, they have no rights, anywhere to stay or to work, they are simply wonderers in their own land, displaced social casualties to be exploited and harassed at will by the present Regime.
Some years a go the eminent Pushkin wrote:
The real problems are on the streets …

Silent Witness
Beijing 09/01/07

 

 

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