Impact of Solidarnosc in Chil "OUR WORKING CLA

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Abridged and adapted from the Hong Kong monthly 1TK stel toner October Review, this article describes the movement for free trade unions in China sparked by Poland's examnle Maoist re-education' ..but the 're-educating' effect of Solidarnose was more powerful. •I Eter se aserc comped Jown. THE 1980 autumn heat from Gdansk • reached Peking, ten thousand kilometers away.

When the workers' strike movement started in Poland, regimes of the Soviet bloc at once signalled a red light and denounced the workers for their anti-socialist" attempt to form an independent trade union. The Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) was urged to respond with an iron hand.

But in China, the Communist Party leadership responded quite differently. In the official organ of the CCP, the People's Daily, anti-USSR propaganda had been focussing on Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and (allegedly, through Vietnam) in Kampuchea, and the anti-USSR feelings of the Polish people apparently tuned in well with the propaganda; thus, its coverage on the strike movement in Poland was rather detailed and favourable.

This proved to have reaching consequences.

White-hot

From August 14, 1980, when the strike movement began to turn white-hot, the People's Daily reported on the developments almost every day for a month. On August 18, the front page headline read "Some factories in Poland set up Strike Coordinating. Committees to lead the strikes in unison, and put forward 16 demands to the government"

The report quoted from the Strike Coordinating Committee's communique: "Even when the strike is over, the Strike Coordinating Committees will not dissolve but will continue to struggle for the realisation of their demands, they will become the provincial committees of the free trade union... The workers make political demands such as the end of censorship, guarantee of the freedom of speech and publication, formation of free trade unions, elimination of privileges, release of political prisoners and others.' Pickets After August 20, the People's Daily even carried photos showing the striking workers distributing leaflets and the picket lines guarding occupied factories.

Thanks to the reportage in the CCP official papers, the people of China have generally come to know the methods, political demands and victory of the Polish workers. The stimulus was beyond the CCP leadership's calculation and in the later stage, irretrievable.

Of course, the Peóple's Daily repeatedly attacked Soviet hegemonism, yet it could not disguise the fact that although anti-USSR feelings played a part, the Polish workers' struggle was directed first and foremost at the PUWP bureaucracy. The Polish workers were putting forward, demands primarily as workers and not as Poles. The People's Daily, on August 20, had made a reference to the demand of the Polish workers in 1976: "All power to the working class!"

As the Polish events unfolded, the CCP was increasingly aware that it was playing with fire. The People's Daily started carrying articles meant to persuade the people that the CCP and the PUWP were different.

The papers described how the trade unions helped with the livelihood of the workers and how the 3rd session of the Sth National People's Congress was "a congress of democracy and reform"

Boundaries The CCP leadership takes the Polish event seriously. It is conscious that the Chinese workers are likely to follow the Polish example, and perhaps in a more radical way.

The Hong Kong Seventies Monthly (April 1981) reprinted an internal document produced by the propaganda department of a provincial committee in China on 25 November 1980, which pointed out that "the impact of the Polish event far exceeds its national boundaries."

It proposed that the authorities should adopt measures includingthe following: "To express that it would promote extensive socialist democracy recognise that the trade union is an independent, self-governing institution of the working class, recognise that workers have the right to strike."

Extension The document concluded by saying that "some courtries in Eastern Europe are very scared of the extension of the Polish phenomena. Czechoslövakia and East Germany have taken measures to blockade news about the Polish event, and have repeatedly published sayings condemning the emergence of anti-socialist currents in Poland.

The Czechoslovak authorities, in order to prevent the extension of the Polish event, are intensifying their measures to further control the trade unions, continue the repression on the Charter 77 movement, and prohibit underground Catholic publications.

Hungary tries to prevent the emergence of independent trade unions by giving more power to [state] trade unions. Lately, East Germany ruthlessly repressed a strike of underground railway workers in order to prevent the appearance of the Polish events in East Germany. All these induce international observers to make a rather justified prediction that in the 1980s, new upheavals caused by the Polish events will occur in Eastern Europe"

Although this paragraph did not mention China, its implications were obvious. 'It is not known how the debate went on in the party. But speeches made by CCP leaders and the regime's subsequent measures clearly indicated the result of this debate.

Posture

On 30 April 1981, Chen Yu, vice-chairman of the official China National Federation of Trade Unions, took pains to attirm that people in China who want to set up a Polish-type free trade union "do not get the support of the masses" , and stressed that his union was totally 'independent' In the beginning, the CCP tried to put up a posture of reform to moderate its antagonism to the people. At the end of 1980, election of people's deputies on the county level was conducted throughout the countryside, and the system of workers congresses was practised in some enterprises.

On 21 March 1981, when a delegation from the French CFDT visited China, a CCP official told the delegation Art as mic o MAAMLA did TRININ 1H11 TEET that among China's 400,000 enterprises, 38,000 had established workers' congresses. He frankly admitted that this was one of the means to prevent a Polish-type labour crisis in China.

However, since the bureaucrats at different levels of the hierarchy do not wish to give up their power, the county-level elections had come across much opposition from the cadres. The so-called workers' congresses exist only in name. Besides, the CCP is entrapped in increasing economic difficulties and political crises.

Thus, the CCP finally decided to go on the road that Czechoslovakia and East Germany took, and carried out a ruthless repression of opposition forces.

In April 1981 the CÇP authorities launched massive arrest of democratic movement activists, and almost all editors of the main samizdat publications were arrested. At the end of May 1982, after over a year's detention, two of them, Wang Xizhe and He Qiu, were sentenced to 14 years and 10 years in jail.

In November 1981, the Peking Municipal Government promulgated a decree forbidding the people to demonstrate, rally or give speeches at the Tian An Men Square.

But the seeds of the anti-bureaucratic struggle of the Polish workers, ironically dispersed by the CCP, found rapid germination and growth in the soil of China. The Chinese • people expressed their excitement over the Polish events both by words and by action.

Samizdat

Samizdat publications wasted no time in congratulating the Polish workers, analysing this valuable experience, and drawing lessons from the struggle of the Polish workers. The Chinese working class also reacted by actual Organisation, action and strikes; the demand for a Solidarity-type independent trade union gained popularity.

Even students demanded an independent students' union and started the organisational work of linking up with each other all over the country.

Samizdat publications, whose banner is democracy and whose aim is to carry the Chinese revolution to the end, burgeoned in Peking in November 1978. It did not take iong for such publications to spread all over the country. Most of them managed to stay independent of party control.

The samizdat publications responded to the Polish event with enthusiastic greetings and unconditional internationalist solidarity. The editorial of Sea Waves of Qingdao, No. 7 (August 1980) said: "Public ownership of the means of production has not eliminated D0L4d exploitation and repression •.. Privileges which have replaced capital are repressing the labourers in a more undisguised, intensive way than capital. There is no sign whatever of Marx's most basic idea - the emancipation of man...

"From Poland came the news of victory of the struggle of the working class. This event tells us that: socialism should be a method for seeking the emancipation of man . .. one-party structure leads to dictatorship."

In November 1980, Sea Waves said: "The Polish workers' strike movement led by Walesa gained victory with the formation of the independent trade union, and it has become the most glorious new starting point in the history of the international communist movement...

"When the workers go on massive strike and themselves organise a trade union that represents the interests of the workers, when the workers have the possibility of their own independent activities, a political party in essence has come out. Political parties are simply organisations which have common purpose, unified will, a programme and unanimous interests. The Polish Solidarity has all the above conditions...

"Therefore, a second political: party has finally emerged in socialist Poland, and it is a political party truly belonging to the working class.

Continuous

"The impact of the victory of the Polish working class is far from what they themselves can estimate, and it 1s not limited by national boundaries. It is a brand new milestone for the communist system. It has shaken and negated all regimes carrying the brand of socialism.

"It is an example for the labouring people of the socialist countries. It starts and develops the possibility of continuous revolution under socialist conditions."

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