On April 25, 1989, Deng Xiaoping made a speech to Communist Party leaders urging an immediate government crackdown on any sign of an upsurge in the democratic movement. Party leaders 'should learn from the experience of Poland's Solidarity trade union', and 'must not be soft-handed' in dealing with the democratic movement in China, he said.
Then on June 4, 1989, the government launched its bloody crackdown on the movement by students and workers. The latter was represented in Tiananmen Square by the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation (BWAF), and I was their spokesman. The crackdown was carried out faithfully in the spirit of Deng's speech.
A quarter of a century has passed since Lech Walesa and his fellow shipyard workers first raised the Solidarnosc banner. But China's leaders are still haunted by its spectre, and deeply fearful that a similar movement could arise in China to challenge the party's rule. Indeed, this is probably the main reason why Beijing still prohibits the establishment of independent trade unions on the mainland.
In commemorating this year's anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and the BWAF, we should remember that the condition of Chinese workers today is in many ways even harsher than it was 17 years ago. But it is also vital to make a pragmatic comparison of the situation that faced Poland's Solidarity in 1980 and that facing the current workers' movement in China. This analysis shows that the Chinese leadership's deep-seated fears about the escalating levels of labour unrest in China are fundamentally misplaced. By taking a more liberal and enlightened approach - rather than resorting to further repressive crackdowns - it could actually pre-empt and resolve the 'threat to social stability' that it sees lurking in many parts of the country's industrial relations scene today.
First, the current social situation in China is very different from that of Poland in the 1980s. At that time, Poland was under a centrally planned and state-owned economy. There was no conflict between capitalist employers and workers, because capitalism didn't exist there. Whenever conflicts arose between state-owned companies and the workforce, management had no power or authority to accede to workers' reasonable demands on issues like wages and working conditions.
Any form of worker militancy then tended to escalate to the level of a confrontation with the real owners of the enterprises concerned - usually the local government. As a result, workers' protests of all kinds could evolve only in one direction: political struggle, and ultimately - in the case of Solidarity - a direct challenge to the government's authority.
The situation in China today is completely different. There is no objective reason why workers' struggles have to turn into political challenges or confrontations. After 20 years of economic reforms, countless privately held, foreign-invested and joint-venture enterprises have been established. Even managers at state enterprises can control the company's profits, set the wages and benefits of its workers, and hire and fire employees at will.
