China Is Not Red Anymore by Wendy Liu For those whose concept of China is frozen in the 1970s and for anyone who would like to know about today's China. 13. Labor Unrest Another major political change has been the development of labor movement or labor unrest, a new form of political expression for the Chinese people. Together with its evolvement from almost a non-phenomenon in China before the reforms to a constant occurrance in its national life today, there has also been a new and increasingly encouraging tolerance on the part of the Chinese government towards the labor movement. In the past few years, there have been many labor unrests, such as: 1) Workers of bankrupt textile factories protesting in China's southwest, 2) Unpaid workers and pensioners sitting down in the smoke-stack northeast, 3) Laid-off construction workers in the northwest demanding work in the street, 4) Miners of China's biggest nonferrous mine burning cars and breaking windows in protest of unfair and corrupt handling of the mine's bankruptcy, 5) And others. There were altogether 120,000 labor disputes in 1999 alone, a 14-fold increase from 1992. Yet, with a growing maturity, the Chinese government as well as its police force has generally handled these unrests gently. The fact that China's Labor Ministry publishes statistics on labor unrest these days and that its officials willingly speak about the issue shows how much China has changed. Labor unrest and unemployment were seen in the past as a capitalist malady that couldn't have existed in a socialist planned economy. How true! Min-gao-guan The most heartening phenomenon in today's China, however, has to be what the Chinese call "Min-gao-guan" - citizens suing officials. In 2000, the tenth year of the adoption of the Administrative Procedure Law which allows citizens to sue officials for abuse of authority or malfeasance, there were 100,000 cases of citizens suing officials, and in 40 percent of these cases, the citizens won. Among them, there was: 1) A company suing the local Industry/Commerce Administration for inaction regarding renewal of a license it had applied for, 2) A farmer suing the Ministry of Education for inaction regarding misconduct in an entrance exam, 3) A mother and child suing the local public transportation bureau for compensation regarding a fatal accident involving the child's father caused by road haz ards the bureau was responsible for cleaning but didn't, 4) A group of farmers suing the local government for inaction regarding a land ownership dispute, 5) And others. These Min-gao-guan stories have also found their way into American or American owned publications. Thus: 1) Newsweek carried a story about the parents of a boy diagnosed with AIDS. They were seeking financial redress from the government-run hospital where their son got a tainted blood transfusion, 2) The Washington Post reported a story of a rural couple taking the local government family planning bureaucracy to court for physical and psychological damage suffered by the wife from a forced late-term abortion and winning the case, 3) Far Eastern Economic Review told a story in 1998 in which more than 100 households facing eviction in Beijingt sued their district government for greater compensation, 4) Asiaweek covered it further in its 1999 story reproting that 11,800 residents of another district in Beijing were suing the local real-estate bureau for illegal eviction, making it the biggest class-action suit in China thus far, 5) According to The Washington Post, a Sichuant village woman led 2,164 families in 1996 in the then largest lawsuit against the government over outrageous and illegal taxes, 6) A lawyer in Shaanxit province represented 5,000 farmers in 1999 in fighting both high taxes and government toughs beating farmers for not paying, 7) And many others.