Jottings from the Granite Studio

Last week Chinese authorities rescued 500 people–many of them children–from brick factories in Shanxi. The workers had been sold to these kilns by unscrupulous labor agencies and then kept there against their will as slaves, working 18 hours a day under the constant threat of physical abuse. All the while, authorities in the province turned a blind eye to the goings-on at the kilns. (ESWN has translations of Chinese media reports on the incident. Some of the details differ from later accounts in the domestic and foreign press.)

Earlier this month, a group of distraught parents stormed the kilns trying desperately to rescue their children, only to meet stiff resistance from the usual suspects–thugs hired by the kiln owners with support from corrupt local officials.

Frustrated and frantic, the parents went online, writing an open letter and posting it on Dahe. Eventually the letter ended up on the popular Chinese website Tianya and the subsequent internet frenzy forced the government’s hand. Police raided the kilns and freed the workers. As of this week, 168 people have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Such was the outrage that even the normally Kool Aid-soaked editors of the China Daily felt compelled to voice their own discontent.

Sort of.

Reading their op-ed piece carefully, one can still catch the not-so-faint whiffs of “Who? What? Us?” wafting from the print, like the riptide of odor seeping from behind the sanitized walls of a New-and-Improved hutong loo.

The forced labor scandal shows how backward parts of this giant country are despite rapid economic development.

Ah, I see. These are problems of poverty and lack of economic development. Really now, doctor? (Just finished watching Boogie Nights, sorry.) Shanxi is underdeveloped? That must be why WHOLE sections of Jianwai Soho are reportedly ernai villages stocked by the man-purse brigade who roll into town in their Shanxi-plated Audi A8s with wads of cash from their illegal coal mines and, it would appear, a little extra made on the side in the brickmaking business.

I’m tired of China blaming corruption on “poverty” or “lack of development.” Say it with me, people: Corruption in China is a systemic problem made worse because authorities are not responsible nor answerable to those they govern.

Even more galling than blaming it on “poverty” was the China Daily’s linking of the Shanxi horror with the recent wage disputes at foreign companies such as McDonald’s, KFC, and Wal-Mart. Now, I’m the last person to defend US corporate interests BUT…if the China Daily really sees these two events (the enslavement of children versus wage-hike disputes) in the same light then they’re either a) more stupid than even I could have imagined b) more cynical than anyone could have imagined c) somebody’s given them a fresh batch of Kool-Aid or d) all of the above.

On the flip side, the article in Time suggested that this sort of internet activism might mean a new chapter in civil society in China. Possibly. We’ve heard that before. And it’s worth quoting from Chris O’Brien’s recent article about yet another cover-up of yet another horrific situation: an epidemic of child sex abuse in Gansu.

O’Brien quotes a journalist who covered the story:

“This kind of thing is quite common in rural areas. People there are very uneducated.” He moved on to say how he didn’t want to exaggerate the story for the sake of the children who had suffered and that they should be allowed to forget. The final excuse was predictable and one I suspected was coming all along. “It would not be good for China’s image.”

Once again, we have the “people are poor” excuse which I guess some feel has a better chance of being printed than “Local officials are all wankers who only care about KTV, banquets, and the size of their, ahem, man purses.” Don’t even get me started on the “image” angle. Sounds like somebody in Gansu needs to call the Boston Archdiocese and ask them how well covering up sex abuse in the name of “image” has worked out for the Catholic Church.

I have a hard time believing that the Chinese government is in favor of slavery (despite the howls from the moonbat wing of the American Right). This was the act of greedy and immoral businessmen out to make a buck in today’s go-go China. That said, the system so beloved and protected by the CCP does provide cover for unscrupulous businessmen to act in concert with venal local officials. Grassroots pressure upwards against business or political interests is almost always treated roughly, and media scrutiny of this kind of corruption frequently meets with stonewall tactics or worse. The central government may not be to blame for this situation directly, but they should shoulder heavy responsibility for allowing it to fester for as long as it did.

Slavery is not a foreign concept to China. It existed throughout the imperial age. One set of documents we use in class are Ming Dynasty boilerplate contracts for the sale into bondage of a girl, a boy, and an ox. The ox contract is twice as long as either contract for the children. Slavery declined after the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1723-1735) abolished the class of “mean people” (贱民)–an underclass of hereditary slaves, prostitutes, actors, etc. While not the “emancipation proclamation” that some historians make it out to be, it did grant equal legal status to all commoners regardless of birth. Nevertheless, the “coolie” (苦力) trade of the 19th century, for which workers were “shanghai’ed” to meet demand in both domestic and export labor markets, was just one notable example of how forced and indentured labor was by no means unknown in the later imperial periods. One of the more impressive achievements of the CCP in 1949 was a swift crackdown on all forms of servitude and slavery, though I suppose some would argue that one master was only exchanged for another.

Slavery in any form is an abomination. The enslavement of Africans in the early part of our history is one of the United States’ darkest hours. It was not a “peculiar institution,” it was a deliberate system of forced labor that came with an incalcuable human cost. Taking slaves–reducing a fellow human being to chattel–is beyond cruel, it is profoundly inhumane and serves as proof that evil exists in the hearts of men. But it has nothing to do with “underdevelopment.” It is about greed, and corruption, and a system that consistently fails to protect the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. The exposure and total abolition of forced labor should matter more to any responsible government than comparatively petty issues such as “national image” or “face.”
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Be sure to check out Bingfeng’s post on the online discussion of the Shanxi slavery case “How online communities respond to the slave labor scandal differently.”