June 7, 2013
Strike at Foxconn Subsidiary

Post and pictures from netizen on Sina Weibo:

vaezhong: All workers at Foxconn group subsidiary ‘Pulihua Technology Co., Ltd.’ went on strike this morning. Government, firefighters, public security and other relevant departments maintained order! The relevant issues include relocation compensation, social insurance, housing funds, etc.! Right now, the departments listed above are in negotiations! @Foshan Television

vaezhong：富士康集团旗下<普立华科技有限公司>早上全体员工罢工，政府、消防、公安等相关部门维持秩序！相关内容包括搬迁赔偿，社保、住房公積金等！目前以上相关部门正在协商！@佛山电视台

-—-NOTE——

Here’s a link to the factory’s profile on GongChang.com. It also cites that it is a subsidiary of Foxconn. 

——PICTURES——

3:31am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35QumnGr_-
Filed under: strike china labor 
May 24, 2013
A Thousand Workers Strike in Shenzhen, Blocking a Road; Several Hundred Riot Police Use Teargas in Suppression [PICTURES]

Story published: 2013/5/23

Shenzhen municipality, Nanshan district, Xile village, on the afternoon of 23.5.2013: 

The entire workforce at RuiDe Electronics went on strike, protesting the company’s moves to relocate without giving workers proper compensation.

Nearly 1000 workers walked off the job and out on to the street to block the road, paralyzing traffic. 

The riot police acted as if they were facing a great enemy, dispatching several hundred riot police dressed in full military equipment. They arrived on the scene to maintain order, bringing with them several riot dogs. Then, the riot police suppressed the workers with military force, launching several canisters of teargas, beating workers, and forcing them back to the factory.

Shenzhen RuiDe Electronics was established in 2004, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ZTE Corporation, primarily manufacturing cellphone chargers, batteries, etc. They currently employ over 1000 people.

**The above text is a translation from an original story from molihua.org. Original story with more pictures can be found here**

——Translators Notes——

ZTE has a glowing self-made image of it’s employee relations. It would be wonderful to compile a worker-made report with the ones made by ZTE.

ZTE is a signatory of the UN Global Compact, which requires annual reporting on its progress of adherence to the 10 principles of the compact. It’s most recent report on the year of 2012 (in Chinese only, it seems) has a lengthy 6-page section entitled “Caring For Employees”, emphasizing the company’s ability to communicate effectively with employees and meet their material needs in terms of things like wages and benefits.

ZTE’s supplier code of conduct requires them to “treat people with dignity and respect” and “obey all applicable laws”. I wonder what the workers would have to say about that, especially with a good lawyer on their side…

Here’s a fancy piece of company news from RuiDe about their cooperation with ZTE, along with a fun factory inspection, meetings, and group pictures.

And here’s a profile on RuiDe Electronics from Gongchang.com and this one from a website that also claims that RuiDe is a subsidiary of ZTE.

——Pictures——

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Buses, presumably brought by police to take away any workers that are arrested. Sign on the nearest bus reads: “Loyalty, Justice, For the People, Devotion”

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Teargas fired at workers by riot police

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3:56am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35QuliXZL-
Filed under: china labor protest strike police 
March 21, 2013
“Shangpu”, “Jieyang” unblocked, official verdict on incident released. Tracking results and analysis [UPDATE - SEE BELOW]

Anybody notice that “Shangpu” is “over”? I haven’t seen any english-language articles following up on the Shangpu incident in Guangdong yet, but as far as local officials are concerned, all issues were “resolved” days ago, according to the prefecture government website.

I was recently notified through our new keyword tracking widget that several key terms, including “Shangpu” (the village in question) and “Jieyang” (prefecture) were unblocked on Sina Weibo. I did a quick check on the development of the situation; here’s some of what I found.

This includes both the land dispute, which was apparently resolved by March 14th, and the capture of the supposed ringleader behind the mob of “outsiders” that clashed with villagers, who was apparently apprehended on the 17th. Both of these stories were released during the Weibo blackout on the issue.

The stories are interesting, but no time to report on them now. For example, the headlines report that all the villagers “clapped” in approval now that the ringleader was caught… 

Our weibo keyword tracking widget recorded the initial blocking of the event on March 11th and the initial unblocking on March 20th [March 21st China time].

Here are some results from our widget:

上浦:

The word 上浦 is unblocked. Time UTC: 5 Mar 2013 08:03:24AM

The word 上浦 is blocked. Time UTC: 6 Mar 2013 19:03:37PM

The word 上浦 is unblocked. Time UTC: 20 Mar 2013 23:03:39PM [SEE UPDATE BELOW!]

揭阳:

The word 揭阳 is unblocked. Time UTC: 10 Mar 2013 19:03:14PM [tracking begins]

The word 揭阳 is blocked. Time UTC: 11 Mar 2013 04:03:13AM 

The word 揭阳 is unblocked. Time UTC: 20 Mar 2013 23:03:56PM [SEE UPDATE BELOW!]

棉湖镇: 

The word 棉湖镇 is blocked. Time UTC: 6 Mar 2013 22:03:50PM

NOTE!! All the keywords are checked every 5 hours, so the times are not exact, but at this point, they’re still close enough to be significant, I believe.

Interestingly, 棉湖镇 is still blocked. My guess is that it just slipped past the censors. I believe that the unblockings are done in accordance with the party statement, i.e. what shows up on the party website, and/or whatever circulates through party propaganda arms. “Shanghu” and “Jieyang” were the key terms in question, the former where the incident occurred and the latter the primary government level responsible for handling the event.  棉湖镇 may have been blocked incidentally at first, and then forgotten during this unblocking - this is a mere conjecture though.

Sorry - no time for further analysis today. I’ve collected lots of data and news stories so far. Hopefully more observations and analysis to come. 

This has turned out to be a great way to track sensitive issues, and I expect some really great results in the future! Again, please contact me if you’d like to get involved with expanding our keyword tracking efforts. We’re assembling a small team of interested people, and we’ll hopefully begin larger operations very soon!

[UPDATE] After checking with our programmer, we learned that the widget we are using had crashed sometime over the last few days and was rebooted yesterday. We’re going to work out when the crash occurred to try to get a window of when the unblocking may have actually occurred, but for now, the times for the latest unblocking could have been significantly earlier, even by a few days. New updates when we have them!

4:02am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35Qugl_RCq
Filed under: china sina microblog weibo government censorship 
March 13, 2013
China Labour Bulletin Reports: Contemporary history of workers' movement in China

I don’t know why I never came across these before! Great overviews by historical period, and by issue. My reading list just got longer.

Sample:

The Workers’ Movement in China

A series of reports tracking the development and characteristics of China’s workers’ movement since 2000,as well as specific incidents during in the reform of state-owned enterprises.

 

4:42am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35Qug9b6JR
Filed under: china labor research history workers social movement 
March 11, 2013
Corporate Research Project's "Corporate Rap Sheet"

Well written, thoroughly devastating criticism of some of the worlds largest corporations. 

Lots of info on China as well. Check it out!

7:06am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35Qug0OOeV
Filed under: china labor rights human rights 
March 11, 2013
Caught in the act! “Jieyang” prefecture blocked over Shangpu village conflict

Last night “Jieyang” was climbing to the top of the Sina Weibo top ten list when news of the crackdown, which also occurred last night, had just broke.

After the first news of the crackdown broke last night, I was able to begin tracking “Jieyang” before it was blocked. Evidence from our new tracking program yielded the following results:

The word 揭阳 is unblocked. Time UTC: 10 Mar 2013 19:03:14PM

The word 揭阳 is blocked. Time UTC: 11 Mar 2013 04:03:13AM

This means “Jieyang” could have been blocked any time within this 5 hour window, but it was blocked by around noon Beijing time. Monday mornings are no doubt busy at Sina :)

As a side note of political analysis, the Financial Times wrote that the police force was reportedly under the direction of the county level. However, the county and prefecture level governments have issued joint statements regarding the handling of the situation on March 9th via the prefecture government’s website, as noted in my last post. This is yet another striking similarity to the government’s handling of Wukan, where the conflict escalated to the prefecture level, county and prefecture issued joint statements, and words regarding the county and prefecture governments were blocked they positioned their police forces and political statements. In the case of Wukan, the provincial level government stepped in, quite possibly to gain political capital for then Governor Wang Yang’s shot at the standing committee on the national level. In this case, I would be that the provincial level has an eye on the situation, but I can only wonder why and whether the provincial level officials might want to step in, should the prefecture be unable to handle its own affairs. Perhaps if there were increased attention from foreign media, it might play in the favor of the villagers in a way - it was a thorn in the side of the local party officials over the Wukan incident, as noted in the closing of my latest paper on the issue. If you have any alternate readings, please let me know!

Using this new program, I’ve been able to custom track keywords for blocking and unblocking over 5 hour intervals. I’ve also detected change from unblocked to blocked in the term “Shangpu” on March 6th (March 7th China time).

With some tweaking and maybe a little help from friends (hint hint), I hope we will be able to track more words at much more frequent intervals. 

This figures could prove crucial to research of the inner workings of Sina Weibo, not to mention the political aspect of media control and its human costs.

Again, drop me a line via the contact info in the header to let me know if this project interests you and you’d like to cooperate/contribute in some capacity. We’ll take tech wizards, scientists of politics, sociology, and the like, and, well, basically anyone who is interested and willing to contribute. Thanks! Hope to hear from you!

2:41am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35Quf-yOU4
Filed under: china censorship media microblog 
March 10, 2013
Crackdown on Shangpu, Guangdong; New keyword tracking and observations

There are stories out everywhere now about the local government** crackdown on the village of Shangpu in Guangdong Province. The Financial Times has the latest in English while the BBC has a full article in Chinese. Check them for the full story so far - here’s some observations on Sina Weibo.

“Shangpu” and “Mianhu”, the town in which Shangpu is located, have been blocked, and I’ve been tracking them to see when and whether they become unblocked. Now that this crackdown has taken place “Jieyang”, Shangpu’s prefecture, has climbed to #2 on the Weibo top ten, and has been hovering in the top ten for some time. I’ve been tracking “Jieyang” to see whether it becomes blocked.

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[taken at 19:15 UTC March 10th] 

I’ve also been keeping an eye on the Jieyang prefecture-level government news page. There are a couple of new stories released yesterday. One of them appears to be an official government account of the events; it’s titled “The basic situation of the Guangdong ‘Jiexi [county] Shangpu village incident’”. It seems that the government is still maintaining that the group of thugs who entered the village and clashed with villagers were some random group of people. They also claim that the village head Li Baoyu was first beaten by a random group of people, which he reported to his superiors by phone, and then a large group of people began attacking village residents. Someone please correct my reading of the event - sounds confusing. Certainly is a strange tale.

The second story outlines “10 things” that the Jieyang and Jiexi governments are jointly doing to manage the situation. Li Baoyu and 9 others suspected of being involved with the mob who attacked the villagers have been arrested. The article also claims that the land deal had been cancelled by a local court two months ago. Other heartwarming news among the other 10 measures, including free healthcare services to villagers after the incident.

For me, this horrible crackdown has been an amazing chance to reanalyze the media control campaign around Shangpu in the same way I had done in my recent paper on Wukan. As I did in my paper, I’ll be closely watching the blocking and unblocking of related keywords and their precise timing, as well as the timing of official press releases from governments sources, like the ones from the Jieyang prefecture website. In this way, I hope to patch together (perhaps after many days of analysis) an picture of the media control campaign. 

Though the blockings are interesting, as things have been heating up, I’m particularly interested in the unblocking process. As I have observed in my paper and here on this blog, unblocking of keywords have occurred in very close coordination with the release off official party statements regarding mass incidents, and it seems that Sina weibo has been getting better and better at pushing “party promoted posts” to the public. 

These land seizures are endemic to the system. As a reminder for us all, The Shanghaiist listed of several past struggles over land seizures, including incidents in Wukan and Wanggang in Guangdong Province, Panhe in Zhejiang Province, and Linfen in Shanxi Province) to name a few. 

**It’s important to remember that several levels of government are now directly involved, from the prefecture-level on down. I think it’s important to note who claims to be in charge of settling the dispute, who is making the statements and who is sending in the armed forces. It appears to be in the prefecture’s hands at this point, though the Financial Times says it was reported that the county directed the security personnel conducting the crackdown.

4:27pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35QufzEjt1
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: china censorship news microblog protest 
March 6, 2013
“Shangpu village” and “Mianhu town” blocked on Sina weibo; local gov claims captured thugs

My last post mentioned that “Shangpu” 上浦村 had been blocked. Just tried some other related names and found Mianhu town 棉湖镇, in which Shangpu is situated, is also blocked. 

I don’t have much time to translate and research more this evening, but I thought I’d mention I’ve been checking the county government website. They have some coverage of Shangpu recently. Some earlier stories seem to mention the land dispute. The latest story which is extremely short, mentions that several of the thugs who had entered the village and clashed with the villagers.

While non-government reports I’ve seen, if I remember correctly, claimed that thugs were sent in on behalf of the government to try and force the land grab upon the villagers, the government seems to be taking the line that this was some outside group that just so happened to come in and cause trouble.

No time to translate, but you can follow the link if you’d like. Check out the recent stories as well. I’ll be doing the same after I get some sleep!

5:10pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35QufgKaG7
Filed under: china village protest land 
March 6, 2013

“Shangpu” ［上浦］blocked on Weibo; + new tracking project (see below)

This case is strikingly similar to Wukan in many respects. Although this is not the first case after Wukan in which villagers have protested land grabs and invoked the name of Wukan (and been ignored), it may be the first one to achieve a blocking on Weibo.

I can recall at least one case of a community, the Baiyun district of Guangzhou, specifically threatening to cause a “second Wukan”, as I noted in my paper on keyword control on Sina Weibo during mass incidents.

Check out the story at the China Digital Times or at BBC. They have their own video in English.

**ANNOUNCING A NEW PROJECT TRACKING KEYWORD CONTROL ON SINA WEIBO**

I’m pleased to announce that I have started a new project that automatically tracks the blocking and unblocking of keywords on Sina Weibo. A small, but very effective program allows me to track around 20 keywords, each tested once every 5 hours for changes in there status - “blocked” or “unblocked”.

In this case, I’m very happy to say that I anticipated the blocking of Shangpu. I’ve been tracking the term for around 24 hours now until it was first detected as blocked at around 19:00 UTC (March 7th, 04:00 CST). 

After detecting a change, I begin conducting an analysis of the situation and the news stories covering the event. I am particularly interested in news stories from more official party sources regarding sensitive issues. As I have tracked in my paper regarding the media control efforts around the Wukan incident, the blocking of keywords on Sina Weibo is highly coordinated with the release of particular government statements regarding sensitive issues. 

The pattern of response for government officials during media control campaigns appears to be 1) block keywords related to the sensitive issue in question as the situation worsens 2) manage the situation and establish a new government position 3) release a statement via official news/television/government website regarding the resolution of the situation and unblock keywords related to the sensitive issue so government information can be found on Sina Weibo and even pushed to the users via what I have been calling “party promoted posts”.

In the near future, I plan to release a full statement, or perhaps a separate website, with a more detailed project plan. Thereafter, I hope to make regular updates as I track keyword control and media control campaigns. 

Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments and suggestions. If you are interested in cooperating with this project, please let me know and we’ll talk! Thanks!

3:39pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35QuffvJR-
Filed under: china censorship protest rights peasant 
February 18, 2013
Who Supplies Apple? (It’s Not Just China): An Interactive Map

Here’s a map made from a list of Apple’s suppliers, made available since they joined the Fair Labour Association (FLA). 

It reminds me of a few other firms with notorious labor rights backgrounds that have also published full lists of their suppliers, like this one from Adidas.

It really is incredible the scope of today’s supply chains. While a strike in one plant can send shockwaves around the world, companies can easily shift their weight from one region to another throughout their giant web of suppliers.

This link to the Apple map was shown to me by a colleague, Hermann Aubie, who studies human rights in China at the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku here in Finland. Thanks Hermann!

3:25am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Zt35QueQ8mgo
Filed under: china rights labor suppliers business human rights