Hundreds of factory workers besieged a city hall in an industrial centre in north-east China yesterday after violent clashes with police in which dozens of people were injured. The latest unrest in the industrial heartland of the country was caused by the non-payment of wages at a big metal alloy factory, some for up to two years, according to factory officials.
This incident comes on the heels of China's worst outbreak of industrial unrest in several years in February when 20,000 people fought with armed police for days at the nearby city of Yangjiazhanzi after a molybdenum (a silvery white metallic element) mine went bankrupt.
The simmering unrest in this densely populated industrial area with soaring unemployment underlines the pressures facing Beijing as it tries to accelerate the closure of ailing state-owned enterprises before China joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO), possibly later this year.
Officials said the most recent outbreak blew up on Monday evening when 600 angry workers from the state-owned enterprise blocked the main highway from Liaoyang to Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province to protest about unpaid wages.
With 5,000 workers on its payroll, the factory is the fourth largest in the city of 1.7 million people, and has been working only intermittently since it began losing money six years ago.
Truck loads of armed police moved in at midnight and broke up the blockade to clear the road, a factory official said. Three alleged organisers, all retired workers, Xiao Yunliang, Pang Qingxiang and Lu Ran, were detained, the official said.
Retired people are often at the forefront of demonstrations because their factory pensions are not paid and they are considered less likely to be beaten by police. One official was quoted as saying, "Dozens of protesters were injured."
Yesterday, workers began a siege of the municipal government offices and the crowd reportedly swelled to over 1,000 to demand that the mayor resolve the problem. A city official contacted by The Irish Times inside the besieged building denied last night that any incident was taking place. However, a local government official told a reporter by telephone that the latest and largest protest in decades was going on, adding: "They are still sitting outside, but I don't think they will rush in or take any violent action."
Another factory official was quoted as saying yesterday afternoon: "The siege is still going on at this time and more and more workers from the factory are joining in. The situation is quite tense right now and no one knows when it will end." The demonstrators also demanded the release of the three arrested pensioners.
Demonstrations in the industrial wastelands of Liaoning province by laid-off workers and retired people usually end peacefully. Despite the unrest, the government seems determined to press ahead with reforms to modernise its industrial base in preparation for the competition from abroad which will follow WTO membership.
EU and Chinese negotiators ended a second day of talks on Chinese entry to the WTO on a note of optimism yesterday. Anthony Gooch, a spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, said that compared with the last round of negotiations in March, it seemed "that the moment is more propitious now" for a deal.
The EU is the largest of six WTO members that have yet to sign accords on Beijing's membership of the WTO.