我译中国的大封冻-政权面临它自己的"卡特里娜飓风"

中国的大封冻-政权面临它自己的"卡特里娜飓风"

"对中国政府来说，2008年的大雪灾已经是一个公共灾难形象" -纽约时报


Vincent Kolo， 中国劳工论坛

今年2月7日农历新年即将到来之际，也是全球最大规模的人口流动之时候，中国则经历了为期近四周的极端的寒冬天气。东部和南部的许多地方经历了自1951年以来最寒冷的冬天。据中国红十字会称，暴风雪造成80多人丧生，摧毁或损坏80万间房子，经济和农业的损失高达800亿元（约110亿美元）。航空、公路和铁路运输停顿。电力线路的倒塌和煤炭运输的扰乱导致了中国有史以来最严重的停电，有些地区，如在湖南省郴州--一个有450万人口的城市，近两周没有电力供应。

因为积雪阻塞路轨和击落高架电力线路，大约8000班货运列车被延误。上海地区见证了135多年来最大的降雪，2月2日周六，其长江口的巨大的港口被迫关闭，超过1000只船只被困。铁路运输的瘫痪加剧了电力部门的危机，虽然暴雨之前存在着严重短缺，由于电厂老板为抗议政府的价格管制而蓄意减少煤炭储备，这种短缺变得更为严重。全国电网的产能的不足意味着在情况最好的时候供给偏紧。暴风雨也导致了客运业的混乱，总共10个机场关闭，以及数以万计的坐车人在封锁的道路上滞留几天。作为中国的南北干线公路的京珠高速公路关闭了17天。

江苏省社会主义者陈立志评论道，"它就像影片'后天'中景象"。他告诉中国劳工论坛说："我们在长江三角洲从来没有见过这么多的雪，在这一地区气温降至零度以下是不正常的，"

极端天气会加剧民众关注一国的气候变化，在去年由HSBC进行的一项调查中受访者中有47 ％认为气候变化是人类面临的一个最大的问题，在世界上这也是比率最高的之一。科学家们在中国的大冻结是否和全球变暖有联系上意见不一。但有些东西显然已经出差错-两个受灾最严重的省份湖南和贵州有一个副热带气候。风雪是和复发的寒冷天气的拉尼娜现象有关，拉尼娜也在最近几个星期造成了澳大利亚和印度尼西亚以及南部非洲国家的灾难性的洪水。拉尼娜现象的增强和频发及在最近几十年中其温暖天气的对应物厄尔尼诺现象强烈暗示着由于全球变暖而与更为温暖的海洋温度有联系。


中国受灾最严重的部分-安徽，江西，湖北，湖南和贵州省-包括重要的农业地区，那里冬季作物现已被毁。北京关于农业经济的高级专家陈锡文警告说："在有些地方，新鲜蔬菜和水果受到的影响是灾难性的"。农业部的报告说损失了1440万只家禽， 87万头猪， 45万头绵羊和85000头牛，它们要么冻死要么死于由于交通堵塞导致的缺乏食物和水。灾难在仅数周前实施的政府价格管制上冲破了一个大洞。据国家发改会的说法，1月25日至30日之间，36个城市里，蔬菜的价格上升30 ％。

"由于交通运输及通讯的中断，甚至电话系统失灵，某处介于8千万到1亿2千万人遭受了严重的影响" ，陈立志报道说。 "人们不得不烧木材和为照明买蜡烛。蜡烛的价格也和燃料和食品一样飙升-一根蜡烛，售价为5 -8元人民币（ 7 0美分和1 .10美元）。"


同于布什的飓风惨败

由于风雪减退和中国开始恢复，一场政治风暴正在酝酿之中。对于执政党的'共产党' ，仅在它主办奥运会的六个月之前，2008年可怕的冬天，引起了人们把它和2005年布什政府在飓风卡特里娜上拙劣的反应进行不安的比较。在美国，这一卡特里娜事件和混乱的伊拉克一起标志着一个政治转折点，布什注定是一个'跛脚鸭'总统。最近几个星期的这些事件和卡特里娜事件有许多相似之处，无论北京的宣传机器试图掩盖多少事实，已经暴露了如铁路和电力部门，地方政府，新闻媒体及紧急服务的国家机构的系统性的失败。


为什么这么多的中国的交通运输和能源基础设施在冰冻天气下瘫痪，为什么政府的反应如此缓慢和混乱？近年来中国成为所有投资蓬勃发展体之母，社会固定资产投资占去年国内生产总值份额很大达50 ％ ，但全国电网的扩张始终落后于作为一个整体的经济的增长并导致史无前例的供应紧张问题。在2001年和2007年之间，用电总需求每年增加20.2 ％ ，但安装的发电量只比今年同期增长了18.5 ％。[华尔街日报， 2008年2月6日]


在暴风雪中，有超过2000输电塔[高压电线架]和惊人的39000公里的电力线路在冰雪重压之下坍塌。中国使用的是一种高压电网而不是较为昂贵的地下电缆以及其极度依赖煤炭-供其百分之八十的电力-使得它在暴风雨中特别容易受到攻击。


在许多地区，输电铁塔的倒塌是因为它们间距甚远，这导致它们在架空电缆上的厚厚的冰雪的额外重量的重压下弯曲。这又是削减成本的结果，这是中国很多建设项目的通病。过度依赖煤炭：煤炭占了铁路总运能的百分之四十，除了其可怕的环境影响外，也带来了巨大的后勤问题。


政府对危机的处理赢得了一些人的赞誉。联合国国际减灾战略(ISDR) 的发言人萨尔瓦诺布里塞尼奥声称 "世界各地的各国政府可以借鉴中国政府的作为"。一些评论家竟然歌颂起独裁政府的美德，正如在（2月7日）国际先驱论坛报的一个报道中那样。这个报道谈及一个"独特的中国式的共产主义的群众动员，宣传和国家控制" 并称这"显示了一个独裁一党专政的共产主义政府的优势。"


不过，这并不是一个'优势'，中国各级政府的独裁和官僚政治的性质极大地阻碍了救援工作。情况正如2003年的'非典'爆发，严格对媒体的封杀的目的是防止'不稳定'，这阻碍了至关重要的关于灾害的信息流动，并减少了存在着的官方媒体通过揭露弊端和无能对政府机构施加一些压力的本来就有限的空间。这也加强了政府的强硬的，自上而下的危机管理方法。正如一名博客评论说的： "许多朋友想和我一起当义工，但没有正式接受他们的渠道。"


"政府几乎消失了… …"

外界观察家们常常被政府宣传所骗。更精明的观察员是资深的纽约时报驻上海的特派记者Howard W. French。他报道说， "中国天气紧急事件的真正的丑闻是它已经持续了好几个星期而被视而不见并且在这期间的绝大部分时间里没有以紧急事件来对待之。" [纽约时报， 2月1日]


在另一份报告中，French解释说， "虽然雪大，在全国大部分地方的降雪量-被形容为5 0年未遇-一点不象世界其他地区在冬季经常经历的深深的覆盖.. .但在很多受严重影响的地区，政府似乎已经几乎消失，需要提供的紧急服务也如此般消失。"[纽约时报， 2月3日]


即使国家控制的新华社，也引述沃尔玛中国中部地区的高级经理蒋利群的话，说灾害的严重性被大大地低估了，尽管有湖南省气象局发出的早期警报。作为中国经济和政治事务的一个关键的因素的省之间的对抗和竞争无疑使得组织全国力量来应对危机困难重重。举例来说，有的省煤炭盈余但并不愿意将它们让与急需的省份。


中央政府疲于向地方大员发号施令。来自执政的共产党的中央委员会声明警告危机期间的"官员”表现和晋升或处罚挂钩" 。许多人都会同意北京的人民大学的一位教授高芳的这样的观点，他告诉洛杉矶时报（ 2月4日） ， "危机暴露了我们的许多地方官员都是不合格的。大多数是任命的而非选举产生的。或者假如他们是被选举的，选民也往往被要求选谁" 。


但省级和地方官僚的笨拙和无能没有使得北京错过得胜的机会。第一次暴风雪袭击发生在1月10日，然而国务院，中国的内阁用了近3个星期-直至1月2 9日-建立一个全国性的指挥中心以协调救灾工作和煤炭，石油和电力部门直接运转。


官方宣传描绘了一副政府积极地投入处理危机的图景。政府高层人物，尤其是总理温家宝飞至动荡地区，如铁路车站，向群众发言并告诉地方行政部门"不要放松和倦殆" ，正如副总理吴仪说的[新华社， 2月3日]。国有媒体接到命令不报道抱怨之声，只报道正面的消息，时刻牢记'社会稳定'的威胁。在讲话和文章中多次提到'全面战争'的目的是团结人民支持政府和压制批评。国家主席胡锦涛宣布"没有灾难征服得了伟大的中国人民"。当一个统治集团如此利用宣传，工人和普通公民有充分的理由去怀疑。


危机暴露了中国社会的阶级分化。数以千万计的农民工已经被迫放弃自己的一年一次也是唯一的机会从他们的工厂无法形容的苦工和辛劳逃离回他们的家，数以百万计仍面临着粮食和电力短缺问题，最近几天煤炭公司和铁路公司的股票价格由于产生于危机的较高的利润前景而在股票市场上冲进。


有大量的关于胡锦涛在山西省访问并下矿井告诉矿工新年假期期间要继续努力工作以减轻煤炭短缺的媒体报道。他告诉他们："大家春节期间也不能休息了,在这儿我给大家提前拜个早年,祝你们身体健康!工作顺利!家庭幸福!"。这些工人如何心甘情愿地响应之就不清楚了-他们没有给予选择-但是，长达一周的假期通常是用来进行设备的维修和保养的。现在，大多数中国的国营矿山将继续在整个假期开工，而定期的维修工作将被推迟。应该记住，中国的煤炭行业在世界上有最坏的安全纪录，平均每一天有13名矿工死亡。


电力公司发起'叛乱'

尽管该政权有着可怕有力的宣传机器，'后卡特里娜'的政治反应是不可避免的。鉴于根深蒂固的独裁，这个过程将比美国卡特里娜的情况花更长的时间，但质疑和反对太多以至于不能完全消失。许多人已经质问为什么中国能把宇航员送入太空，但不能保持其列车正常运行以顺利度过一个寒冷的冬天。同样，许多人质问花费350亿美元办北京奥运会的价值，经济学家（ 2007年3月1日）指出了这一点，总费用中超过43％用于最后9项奥运会比赛项目。


另一个正当的质疑是，为什么它花了这么长的时间才调动251000解放军部队和77.2万民兵和预备役军人去清理道路和进行其他救灾工作。"在湖南，1月13日就开始下雪"一个博客写道， "为什么只有交警和普通街道清洁工在做这项工作，直至昨日才调动军队 " [国际先驱论坛报， 2008年1月30日]


战士们一旦召集，但他们的工具往往是不够的。有报道说工作队步行着用铲子清理京珠高速公路干线。在某些地区坦克被用于积雪清除工作，然而扫雪机会更有效。新华社报道士兵用机关枪射击来打落架空电缆上的冰，电视新闻显示，维修人员像蜘蛛人似的在高电压线上摇摇欲坠地用锤砍冰。因此有11名电力维修工人已经死亡的悲惨的消息传出并不令人感到意外。而这些死亡却被该政权的媒体机器用来作为鞭策激励人们进一步牺牲的一部分，但事实仍然是，由民主计划带来的机械化和一个健全的投资政策，以及工会的权利，这些人的死亡本来是可以避免的。显然，中国的电力公司没有足够的机动的起重机和斗卡车，使抢修工作变得极其危险和劳动强度很大的任务。正进行着的私有化和行业违规是无助于这些问题和其他问题的解决的。


即使是严冬天气正渐渐逼近，许多电力公司在2008年第一周故意减少它们的煤炭储备。“标准”（1月24日）指出这是一个电厂经理发起的"叛乱"，其目的是迫使政府解除价格管制和增加利润。从12月至次年1月不受国家控制的优质煤的价格上升了13％ ，由575块钱一吨涨到650元一吨，而电力价格仍是固定价格。


电力公司老板效仿了以中石化为首的国有石油炼油公司的策略，炼油公司在10月迫使政府做出了一个令人尴尬的掉头以认可汽油和柴油的价格涨价10 ％。据中国煤炭运输和分销协会的Fang Xiu’an的说法，电厂通常库存18-20天量的煤炭而在某些情况下他们的储备减少到只有3天的量。某些电厂经理据说一直在销售其库存的煤炭而不是燃煤发电，以便从较高的煤炭价格中获利。如果最近几个星期的灾害真的如政府说的是'全面战争'，那么现在许多电力公司的老板应该执行死刑。


这一危机引起了对中国经济模式的可行性的根本性质疑。正如华尔街日报（ 2月6日）指出， "问题的深度表明，该国的快速发展的经济是如何地接近于碰及其物力之极限" 。但是视这样的问题为快速的工业化的一个必然结果将是错误的。在中国问题的症结在于其投资兴盛处于极其无计划和无政府状态。正如政府经常指出的那样，许多投资被干劲十足地投到'浪费的和重复的'如大型商场或五星级酒店的项目中。没有电以及没有消费得起的消费者，这些东西有什么意义呢？


世界上最大的流动

当约2亿流动人口每年为过农历新年艰难地回家时，运输系统长期超载也表明中国的经济蓬勃发展有着极大社会代价。中国和海外资本家赚得的丰厚的利润是建立在来自中国的贫穷内地的'亚无产阶级'的这种大规模的举家移居及在沿海地区的制造业中心为期11个月安排他们住在拥挤的宿舍或其他凑合的住所里的基础上的。这些工人离开自己的亲人，旅行数千公里，然后在资本主义有史以来最恶劣的工业条件下奴隶般的工作的『动机』是不能选择留在他们的家乡，因为那里没有工作，而大部分农田规模太小而且生产力太低以至于不能养家糊口。


时间上非常巧合的，在农历新年开始前一周世界上最大的一年一度朝圣般的流动正开始时，暴风雪袭来了。估计有600万民工滞留在火车站和汽车站。 "由于大雪，成千上万的民工涌至湖南，贵州，或四川省的主要交通枢纽却发现没有更多的公交来把他们送回家" ，陈立志告诉中国劳工论坛，"大多数人住不起当地的每夜10-20元人民币（约1.40-2.80美元 ）的便宜的旅馆。因此，他们滞留，被迫睡在他们可以睡的任何地方。对于某些人，这样的情况持续了一个多星期。其他人选择以步行继续他们的行程，一天走7-10小时，在雪里跋涉50 - 100公里。"


在最糟糕时，惊人的80万名旅客滞留在广东省的省会广州的火车站，该省的流动人口比其他任何省份多-约3 千万。政府的解决方案是在铁路车站周围挂起大量横幅写着要求民工返回自己的工厂并在那里度假的标语。但对于许多人，这不是一种可以选择的办法。正如广东省的一位民工周卫解释说的 "我的工厂宿舍关闭了。我没有地方可去。" 另一位已经在商场外睡了好几夜的民工说："我觉得自己像一个难民" 。 [标准，香港， 1月31日]


大约有150万广东的民工被迫在该省度过农历新年。地方政府和官方[傀儡]工会给点甜头-电影票，卡拉O K入场券，和给家里打电话的免费电话卡。但对于缺乏书面劳动合同以及医疗保险和社会保障覆盖的一个劳动者来说，丧失自己的探亲假是一个沉重的打击。正如陈立志解释说的， "一旦得到工资，许多民工将回家一个月或更长的时间，他们可能会去一个新的地区找工作。"


这些事件再次使人确信中国的民工遭受了痛苦。一个网上的批评者问道，"什么造成了60万人滞留在火车站" ？ "这不是因为一连几天的大雪，它也不是巴士服务的推迟或取消。问题是我们的旧的城乡二元结构" 。 [纽约时代周刊， 2月3日]


因为担心动乱，车站被庞大的准军事部队围着。尽管如此，在广州站为了争购车票，一位女民工被践踏致死和500人受伤。当温家宝作为他到最糟糕的交通瓶颈处的闪电之旅而抵达广州，这部分是为了宣传目的，但部分原因也是去责备当地官员缓慢和无效地应对危机。


被大量报道的温家宝在广州手里拿着扩音器面对群众的场景突现了今天的中国的令人难以置信的社会矛盾。许多民工拥挤在车站前面，不知道是谁在讲话，在毛泽东还是邓小平的时代-那时大多数中国人没有电视，更遑论上网了，这种情况是不可思议的。


正如Howard W. French报道说的： "这默默而有力地承认了这一事实，即保持该国的经济粗制滥造的以百万计的民工是太忙或太穷或太累或太边缘化了以至于不能通过收看电视新闻而要完全通过用扩音器面对群众以足够近来认出他们国家的第二把手了" ， [纽约时报， 2月1日]


'世界级'的基础设施？

即使在正常时期，中国铁路网络在世界上也是最拥挤的，6 ％的世界的轨道运输了24 ％的世界轨道运输量。中国的铁路系统的总长度是76600公里，是世界第三。然而，相对于中国的人口与在过去20多年的爆发性的工业增长，这是一个相当不够大的系统。相比之下，德国拥有45000公里铁路，或相当于中国的58 ％，尽管事实上，德国的领土是中国的1/28。


据一份工业杂志，中国铁路，旅客列车日常只提供241万个坐位，但售出305万张票（高峰时是420万张票），迫使许多乘客站立。对12个小时的旅程来说，这不是开玩笑，由中国标准，这还不是一个特别长的旅程。

货运更是捉襟见肘。任何一天可利用运力是11万个运货车厢，日均需求量却是28万个运货车厢。像许多国有工业，铁路运输是单独省级实体，而不是形成一个完全统一的国家系统。笔者从上海到内陆省份的河北的旅行发现预先购买从北京到我的最终目的地的车票是不可能的。唯一可能的到北京本身的火车站-一个不同的省份，因此不同的公司！-去购买这样的车票

官方统计显示，在过去的5年里兴建了6500公里的新铁路。但与此相比，仅2006年一年里，建成了4400公里的新的高速公路，去年又新建了8300公里高速公路。片面强调公路建设的这种不平衡的原因是因为几乎所有的中国的高速公路都是收费道路，其经费主要根据其和省级政府的合同由私营公司出。铁路也正在向私人和外国资本开放，但这种发展比较迟，所以迄今为止，规模要小得多。


在去年9月，浙江省衢常铁路通车，这是中国的第一条部分资金由私人资本出的铁路。上海铁路局副局长称赞这是"长期以来一直由国家垄断经营的铁路首次向私人资本开放投资和融资，这是一个转折点。" [北京观察， 2007年12月20日]


政府和媒体专家正在利用这次冬季运输危机催促更快速的私有化计划和采用市场解决方案 。随着去年12月最大的铁路公司中国铁通集团有限公司在上海和香港交易所上市，中国现在有四个上市的铁路公司。根据铁道部(MOR)的统计数字，去年铁路网固定投资远远达不到目标，差近三分之一。政府办的北京观察宣布说：" 铁路建设严重缺乏资金，铁道部不得不利用资本市场为目前上市的公司融资并建立新的股份制公司上市。"

这样的一个政府的'专家' 是中国社科院的产业经济学学院的于慧，他辩称， " [铁道部]的行政性垄断必须予以消除，以建立一个合理的竞争机制来促使企业提高效率。"

然而，这些方法-放松管制和更快的私有化-在许多欧洲国家已经进行了，其结果是票价更高，员工及乘客状况恶化，安全标准下降。不应是更多的新自由主义试验和谋取暴利，中国的交通混乱是一个有力的论据证明需要民主的社会主义规划，集中国家资源和掌握技能以及主动的工人和乘客，从根本上铲除官僚主义，把所有的决策权放在选出的可以立即召回的并拿不超过熟练工人的工资的委员会手中。


鼠年

中国的统治者必将惶恐地看着这一新的鼠年。上周温家宝告诉他的内阁："我们担心的是， 2008年经济将是最艰难的一年"。一方面是快速冷却的全球经济和加深的世界各地的银行危机。另一方面存在着与夏季奥运会并行的通胀驱动的逐步增多抗议和罢工。冬季混乱突出了中国的经济增长模式的根本的弱点。北京的独裁者为降低通货膨胀率和尽量减少如能源部门的投机性破坏以及防止经济步美国硬着陆的后尘而斗争的前景如何呢？


基督教科学箴言报（ 2月1日）强调了该政权的问题： "行政价格管制难以落实，现在几乎所有的食品生产，分配和销售都掌握在私人手中...如果农民或店主不能对应他们的成本增长而提高他们的价格，他们将被引向减少供应。"


这当然是在过去2-3周以一个很尖锐的形式被我们所看到的。中央政府一直强调它的价格管制政策只是'暂时'的，而这在春节后可能会被取消，至少是部分地。正如同一期杂志上指出的： "官员坚持说，新设立的食物价格管制仅仅是一个克服市场失灵的努力，而不是退回到社会主义指令性计划经济去。中国不是亚洲唯一的一个国家在面对不断上涨的粮食价格后采取这样的行动：上个月马来西亚配给食用油，而印尼则是补贴食用油精炼厂以降低零售价格。北京的举动，包括遏制小麦，玉米，水稻的出口来努力刺激国内供给和抑制物价的上涨。"[基督教科学箴言报2月1日]


受累于今年的冬天，大量的农作物歉收增加了温家宝政府的压力，这将确保食品价格上涨，11月份以18.2 ％的月增长率向前冲着，继续名列公众的关注问题之首。再多的媒体'开足马力'和宣传也不能阻止未来几个月内对政府处理这次危机和一个引人注目的基础设施的崩溃的真正原因的批评之声。


作为社会主义者的陈立志解释说： "从该冬天的危机得到的教训是显而易见的。如今所需要的是对公共服务特别是在农村地区，围绕农业发展进行大量新的投资，而且以此为契机发展内陆省份的工业。必须扭转今天的片面的对出口的依赖。这将使得数以千万计的变成'工业游牧民'的人们在家里生活和在家附近工作，享受更好的生活水准。不过，这只有在工人和农民的民主计划生产并结束私有化和暴利的基础上才是可能的。"


尽管鼠年不祥地开始，中国劳工论坛祝愿她的读者和所有的社会主义者和劳工活跃分子有一个愉快的假期。这些事件只会说服更多的人加入结束资本主义的混乱和建立未来的民主的社会主义的斗争上来。



China’s big freeze – Regime faces its own ”Hurricane Katrina”


”The Great Snowstorm of 2008 has been a public image disaster for the Chinese government” – New York Times


Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info


In the run up to the Lunar New Year on 7 February, which occasions the biggest human migration in the world, China experienced almost four weeks of extreme winter weather. In many parts of eastern and southern China this was the coldest winter since 1951. Snowstorms killed more than 80 people, destroyed or damaged 800,000 houses and caused economic and agricultural damage valued at 80 billion yuan (about $11 billion), according to the Red Cross in China. Transportation by air, road and rail seized up. Collapsing power lines and disruption of coal deliveries created the country’s worst ever power failures, with some areas without electricity for nearly two weeks, as in the case of Chenzhou, a city of 4.5 million people in Hunan province.


Some 8,000 freight trains were delayed as snow blocked tracks and brought down overhead power lines. Shanghai saw its worst snowfalls in 135 years, and its gigantic port at the mouth of the Yangtze River was forced to close on Saturday 2 February, stranding more than 1,000 ships. The crippling of rail services aggravated the crisis in the electrical power sector, although serious shortages existed before the storms, and became acute as power plant bosses deliberately ran down coal stocks in protest over government price controls. Insufficient capacity in the national power grid means supply is tight at the best of times. The storms also played havoc with passenger transport, with ten airports closed altogether and tens of thousands of motorists stranded for days on blocked roads. China’s main north-south trunk road, the Beijing-Zhuhai expressway, was closed for 17 days.


”It’s like something from the film, ’The Day After Tomorrow,’” commented Chen Lizhi, a socialist from Jiangsu province. ”We have never seen so much snow in the Yangtze Delta, it is not normal for temperatures to drop below freezing in this region,” he told chinaworker.info.


The extreme weather will intensify popular concerns over climate change in a country where 47 percent of those questioned in a survey by HSBC last year consider this to be one of the biggest issues facing humankind, one of the highest ratios in the world. Scientists are divided over whether there is a link between China’s big freeze and global warming. But something clearly has gone awry – Hunan and Guizhou, two of the worst-hit provinces, have a sub-tropical climate. The snowstorms are linked to La Niña, the recurring cold weather phenomenon that has also caused disastrous flooding in Australia, Indonesia and southern Africa in recent weeks. The increased intensity and frequency of La Niña and its warm weather counterpart El Niño in recent decades strongly suggests a link to warmer ocean temperatures as a result of global warming.


The worst hit parts of China – the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou – include important farming regions where winter crops are now destroyed. ”The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic,” warned Chen Xiwen, Beijing’s top expert on the agricultural economy. The Ministry of Agriculture reported the loss of 14.4 million poultry, 870,000 pigs, 450,000 sheep and 85,000 cattle, that either froze to death or died from lack of food and water due to transportation hold-ups. The disaster has smashed a hole in government price controls imposed just weeks ago. According to he National Reform and Development Commission the price of vegetables in 36 cities rose by 30 percent between 25-30 January.


”Somewhere between 80 to 120 million people have suffered serious effects as a result of the breakdown of transportation and communication, with even phone systems out of action,” Chen Lizhi reported. ”People have to burn wood and buy candles for light. The cost of candles as well as fuel and food has shot up – one block candle sells for 5-8 yuan (between 70 cents and $1.10).”


Parallels with Bush’s Katrina fiasco


As the snowstorms recede and China begins to recover, a political storm is brewing. For the ruling ’communist’ party, just six months before it hosts the Olympic Games, the terrible winter of 2008 raises uncomfortable comparisons with the botched response of the Bush Administration to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. That event marked a political turning point in the United States and, alongside the fiasco of Iraq, doomed Bush as a ’lame duck’ president. There are many parallels in the events of recent weeks, which, no matter how much Beijing’s propaganda machine tries to hide the facts, have exposed systemic failings of state agencies such as railway and power authorities, local governments, news media and emergency services.


Why was so much of China’s transport and energy infrastructure immobilised by the freezing weather, and why was the government response so slow and chaotic? China has experienced the mother of all investment booms in recent years, with fixed asset investment accounting for a colossal 50 percent of GDP last year, yet the expansion of the national power grid has consistently lagged behind the growth of the economy as a whole leading to ever tighter supply problems. Total demand for electricity increased 20.2 percent annually between 2001 and 2007, but installed generating capacity only grew by 18.5 percent a year over the same period. [Wall Street Journal, 6 February 2008]


During the storms, over 2,000 transmission towers [pylons] and a staggering 39,000 kilometers of power lines collapsed under the weight of ice and snow. China’s use of a high-tension power grid as opposed to more expensive underground cables, and its crushing dependence on coal – for 80 percent of its electrical power – left it especially vulnerable to the storms.


In many areas where transmission towers collapsed this was because they were spread too far apart, causing them to buckle under the additional weight of thick ice and snow on overhead cables. This is again a result of cost-cutting that is endemic to many construction projects in China. The heavy reliance on coal, apart from its dire environmental effects, also poses huge logistical problems: coal takes up 40 percent of total railway capacity.


The government’s handling of the crisis has won praise from some quarters. A spokesman for the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), Salvano Briceño, claimed ”governments across the world can learn from the Chinese government’s commitment”. Some commentators went so far as the extol the virtues of authoritarian government, as in the case of one report in the International Herald Tribune (7 February). This spoke of a ”uniquely Chinese display of communist mass mobilisation, propaganda and state control,” adding that this, ”illustrated the strengths of an authoritarian one-party communist government.”


But rather than a ’strength’, the dictatorial and bureaucratic nature of Chinese governments at all levels enormously hampered relief work. As in the case of the ’SARS’ outbreak of 2003, strict media censorship aimed at preventing ’instability’ impeded the vital flow of information about the disaster and reduced the limited scope that has existed for the official media to exert some pressure on government agencies by exposing malpractice and incompetence. This also reinforced the government’s rigid, top-down approach to crisis management. As one blogger commented, ”Numerous friends want to join me as volunteers, but there is no formal channel that will accept them.”


”Government almost disappeared...”


It often happens that external observers are taken in by regime propaganda. A more astute observer is Howard W. French, the veteran Shanghai-based correspondent of the New York Times. He reported, ”The real scandal of China’s weather emergency is that it had been going on for weeks, largely uncovered and not treated as an emergency for most of that time.” [New York Times, 1 February]


In another report, French explains that, ”Although large, in most places the snowfall – described as having been the worst in 50 years – has been nothing like the deep cover that other parts of the world often experience in winter... But in many badly affected areas, the government appears to have almost disappeared, so overwhelmed has it been by the demand for emergency services.” [New York Times, 3 February]


Even state-controlled Xinhua News quoted Jiang Liqun, senior manager of central China region of Walmart, saying the severity of the disaster has been largely underestimated despite the early warnings issued by the Hunan meteorological authority. Rivalry and competition between provinces, a crucial factor in Chinese economic and political affairs, undoubtedly complicated efforts to organise a unified national response to the crisis. Some provinces with coal surpluses, for example, were reluctant to release them to provinces in need.


The central government has been busy issuing exhortations and reprimands to its local satraps. A statement from the central committee of the ruling Communist Party warned ”officials’ performances during the crisis could either mean promotion or punishment”. Many would agree with the view of Gao Fang, a professor with People’s University in Beijing, who told the Los Angeles Times (4 February), ”The crisis has revealed that many of our local officials are not qualified. Most are appointed, not elected. Or if they are elected, the voters are often told whom to select”.


But bungling and inaction by provincial and local bureaucrats does not let Beijing off the hook. The first snowstorms struck on 10 January, yet it took almost three weeks – until 29 January – for the State Council, China’s cabinet, to set up a national command centre to coordinate relief work and direct operations in the coal, oil and power sectors.


Official propaganda portrays a government taking a ’hands on’ approach to the crisis. Top government figures, especially Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, have been flying to trouble spots such as railway stations to address crowds and tell local administrations ”not to be slack and weary”, as Vice Premier Wu Yi put it [Xinhua, 3 February]. The state-run media has received orders not to report complaints, only positive news, bearing in mind the threat to ’social stability’. Repeated references in speeches and articles to ’all-out war’ are designed to unite the population behind the government and suppress criticism. ”No disaster could vanquish the great Chinese people” declared President Hu Jintao. When a ruling group uses propaganda like this, workers and ordinary citizens have every reason to be suspicious.


The crisis has laid bare the class divisions in Chinese society. While tens of millions of migrant workers have been forced to abandon their one and only chance to escape to their families from the unspeakable drudgery and hard toil of their factories, and millions still face food and power shortages, the share prices of coal and rail companies have surged on the stock market in recent days on the prospect of higher profits stemming from the crisis.


There was huge media coverage of Hu Jintao’s visit down a mineshaft to tell miners in Shanxi province to keep working through the New Year holiday in order to relieve coal shortages: ”As you all will not be able to have any days off, I wish you early New Year’s wishes for good health, smooth work and prosperous families,” he told them. How willingly these workers responded to this idea is unclear – they were not given a choice – but the week-long holiday is normally used to carry out equipment repairs and maintenance. Now, most of China’s state-run mines will continue working through the holiday, and the scheduled maintenance work will be postponed. It should be remembered that China’s coal industry has the worst safety record in the world with an average of 13 miners killed every day.


Power companies stage ’rebellion’


Despite the regime’s awesome propaganda machine a ’post-Katrina’ political reaction is inevitable. This process will take longer than was the case in the United States given the heavy boot of dictatorship, but the questions and objections are too many to simply disappear. Many are already asking how China can put astronauts into space but can’t keep its trains running through a cold winter. Likewise, many question the merits of spending $35 billion on the Beijing Olympics, which as The Economist (1 March 2007) pointed out, is more than 43 percent of the total cost for the last nine Olympic Games put together.


Another valid question is why it took so long to mobilise 251,000 PLA troops and 772,000 militia and army reservists for road clearance and other relief work. ”In Hunan, it started snowing on the 13 January,” wrote one blogger, ”Why is it that this was left to traffic policeman and ordinary street cleaners until yesterday, when the army was mobilized?” [International Herald Tribune, 30 January 2008]


Once the soldiers were called in, their tools were often inadequate. There are reports of work teams clearing the main Beijing-Zhuhai expressway on foot, using shovels. Tanks were used for snow clearance work in some areas, but snowploughs would have been more effective. Xinhua News reported soldiers firing sub-machine guns to shatter the ice on overhead cables, and television news showed maintenance workers dangling from high voltage lines like human spiders, hacking away the ice with hammers. The tragic news that eleven electrical maintenance workers have been killed is therefore no surprise. While these deaths have been exploited by the regime’s media machine as part of its drive to spur the population to greater sacrifices, the fact remains that with mechanisation, a sound investment policy as a result of democratic planning, and trade union rights, these deaths could probably have been avoided. Evidently China’s power companies have a shortage of mobile cranes and bucket-trucks, making repair work an extremely dangerous and labour intensive task. These and other problems have not been helped by the ongoing privatisation and deregulation of the industry.


Many power companies deliberately ran down their coal stocks in the first weeks of 2008, even as the severe winter weather was approaching. This was a ”rebellion by power plant managers”, to quote The Standard (24 January), aimed at pressuring the government to lift price controls and increase profits. From December to January, the price of premium coal which is not controlled by the state rose by 13 percent, from 575 yuan a tonne to 650 yuan, while electricity prices are still subject to price fixing.


Power company bosses were copying the tactics of the state-owned oil refiners, led by Sinopec, who in October forced the government into an embarrassing u-turn when it sanctioned a 10 percent rise in petrol and diesel prices. Power plants that normally stock 18-20 days’ worth of coal had in some cases run their reserves down to as little as three days’ worth, according to Fang Xiu’an, of the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association. Some power station managers have reportedly been selling their coal stocks, rather than burning them, in order to profit from higher coal prices. If the disaster of recent weeks really was ’all-out war’ as the government says, then many power company bosses should now be facing the firing squad.


This crisis raises fundamental questions about the viability of China’s economic model. As The Wall Street Journal (6 February) points out, ”the scale of the problems showed how close the country’s racing economy is to hitting its physical limits”. But it would be false to see such problems as an inevitable result of rapid industrialisation. The crux of the problem in China is that the investment boom is largely unplanned and anarchic. As the government regularly points out, much investment is ploughed into ’wasteful and duplicative’ projects such as monster shopping malls or five-star hotels. What is the point of these without electricity, and without consumers who can afford to shop or stay in them?


World’s biggest migration


The chronic overloading of transport systems as around 200 million migrants make the annual trek home for the Lunar New Year, also shows the inhuman social cost of China’s booming economy. The bumper profits made by Chinese and overseas capitalists are based upon uprooting this massive ’sub-proletariat’ from China’s poor inland and billeting it for eleven months of the year in crowded dormitories or other makeshift accommodation in the coastal manufacturing centres. The ’motivation’ for these workers to leave their loved ones, travel thousands of kilometres and then slave under some of the worst industrial conditions in the history of capitalism, is that staying in their home village is simply not an option. There are no jobs, and most farms are too small and unproductive to support a whole family.


With devilish timing, the snowstorms struck just as the world’s largest annual pilgrimage was beginning. One week before the start of the New Year, an estimated six million migrant workers were stranded at railway and bus stations. ”Due to the snow, thousands of migrant workers arrived at major transport hubs in Hunan, Guizhou or Sichuan province, to find there was no more public transportation to finish their journey home,” Chen Lizhi told chinaworker.info. ”Most can’t afford even a cheap bed in a local hostel, at 10-20 yuan ($1.40-2.80) per night. So they are stranded, forced to sleep wherever they can. For some this lasted for over a week. Others chose to continue their journeys on foot, walking for 7-10 hours a day, and covering 50-100km through the snow.”


At its worst, a staggering 800,000 travellers were stranded at the main railway station in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, which has more migrants than any other province – roughly 30 million. The government’s solution, spelt out on massive banners draped around railway stations, was for migrants to return to their factories and spend the holiday there. But for many this was not an option. As Zhou Wei, one of Guangdong’s migrant workers, explained, ”My factory dormitory is closed. There’s nowhere for me to go.” Another migrant who had slept rough for several nights outside a shopping mall said, ”I feel like a refugee”. [The Standard, Hong Kong, 31 January]


Around 15 million of Guangdong’s migrant workers were forced to spend the Lunar New Year in the province. Local governments and the official [puppet] trade unions dealt out sweeteners – tickets to film-shows, karaoke, and free phone cards to call home. But for a workforce that lacks written job contracts, medical insurance and social security cover, the loss of their home leave is a heavy blow. As Chen Lizhi explains, ”Once they are paid, many migrants will go back home for a month or longer, then they will probably go to a new area to find work.”


These events have again brought home the suffering of China’s migrant population. ”What caused 600,000 people to be stranded at the train station?” asked one online critic. ”It is not because of heavy snow for days, nor is it the delayed or cancelled bus service. The problem is our old, two-track urban-rural divide.” [The New York Times, 3 February]


Railway stations were ringed by huge paramilitary forces for fear of unrest. Still, one woman migrant worker was trampled to death and 500 people were injured in a stampede for tickets at Guangzhou station. When Wen Jiabao arrived in Guangzhou as part of his lightning tour of the worst traffic bottlenecks, this was partly for propaganda purposes, but partly also to upbraid local officials for their slow and ineffective response to the crisis.


The incredible social contradictions in China today were highlighted by Wen’s much-reported appearance, megaphone in hand, before the crowd at Guangzhou. Many of the migrant workers huddled in the station forecourt did not know who the speaker was, a situation unthinkable in the era of Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping – a time when most Chinese did not have access to television let alone the internet.


As Howard W. French reports: ”It was a quiet but powerful recognition of the fact that the millions of migrant workers who keep the country’s economy churning are too busy, or too poor, too tired or too alienated, to have followed the news on television closely enough to recognize their country’s second-highest official simply by seeing him before a crowd with a megaphone.” [The New York Times, 1 February]


’World-class’ infrastructure?


Even in normal times China has the most congested railway network in the world, carrying 24 percent of the world’s rail traffic on just 6 percent of the world’s tracks. The total length of China’s railway system is 76,600 km, making it the third longest in the world. But this is a vastly undersized system compared to China’s population and the explosive growth of industry in the last 20 years. By comparison, Germany boasts 45,000 km of railways, or 58 percent of China’s total, despite the fact its territory is 28 times smaller than China’s.


According to an industry magazine, Chinese Railways, on a daily basis passenger trains provide only 2.41 million seats, but issue 3.05 million tickets (4.2 million tickets on peak days), forcing many passengers to stand. This is no joke on 12 hour journey, which is not an especially long trip by Chinese standards.


Freight transport is even more overstretched. While total available capacity on any day is 110,000 freight cars, average daily demand is for 280,000 freight cars. Like most state-owned industries, the railways are separate provincial entities rather than forming a fully integrated national system. The author, on a trip from Shanghai to the inland province of Hebei, found it was impossible in advance to buy a ticket to take me from Beijing to my final destination. It was only possible to buy such a ticket from the railway station in Beijing itself – a different province and therefore a different company!


Official statistics show that 6,500 km of new railways were built in the last five years. But this compares to 4,400 km of new expressways built in 2006 alone, and a further 8,300 km of expressways last year. The reason for this lopsided emphasis on road-building is that almost all China’s expressways are toll roads, largely financed by private companies under contract from provincial governments. The railways too are being opened to private and foreign capital, but this development has come much later and is, so far, on a much smaller scale.


In September last year, the Quchang railway in Zhejiang province opened to traffic, China’s first railway financed in part by private capital. The Deputy Director of Shanghai Railway Bureau hailed this as ”a turning point in the opening of railway investment and the financing market, which has long been monopolized by the state, to private capital for the first time”. [Beijing Review, 20 December 2007]


Government and media ’experts’ are using the winter transport crisis to urge even faster privatisation and adoption of ’market solutions’. With the listing of China Railway Group Ltd., the biggest rail company, on the Shanghai and Hong Kong bourses in December, China now has four stock market-listed railway companies. Last year, based on statistics from the Ministry of Railways (MOR), fixed investments in the rail network fell far short of the target, by almost one-third. ”With a severe shortage of funds for railway construction, the MOR will have to make use of the capital market, financing present listed companies and establishing new joint stock companies for listing,” declared the government-run Beijing Review.


One such government ’expert’ is Yu Hui, from the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who argues, ”The [MOR] administrative monopoly must be eliminated in order to set up a reasonable mechanism for competition and impel enterprises to improve efficiency.”


Yet wherever these methods – deregulation and faster privatisation – have been carried out as in many European countries, the results have been higher ticket prices, worsening conditions for employees and passengers, and falling safety standards. Rather than more neo-liberal experiments and profiteering, China’s traffic chaos is a powerful argument for democratic socialist planning, to pool national resources, harness the skills and initiative of workers and passengers, and root out bureaucracy by placing all decision-making in the hands of elected committees, subject to immediate recall, and receiving no more than a skilled workers’ wage.


Year of the Rat


China’s rulers must be viewing the new Year of the Rat with trepidation. ”We fear that 2008 will be a most difficult year for the economy,” Wen told his cabinet last week. On one hand there’s the rapidly cooling global economy and deepening worldwide banking crisis. On the other there’s the Summer Olympics running parallel with the risk for escalating inflation-driven protests and strikes. The winter chaos has underlined fundamental weaknesses in China’s economic growth model. What are the prospects for Beijing’s dictators in their struggle to hold down inflation, minimise speculative sabotage as in the energy sector, and at the same time prevent the economy following the United States into a hard landing?


The Christian Science Monitor (1 February) underlined the problems for the regime: ”Administrative price controls, however, are hard to implement now that almost all food production, distribution, and sales are in private hands... If farmers or shopkeepers are not allowed to raise their prices in line with their costs, they will be tempted to hold supplies back.”


This of course, is what we have seen, in a very sharp form, over the last 2-3 weeks. The central government has stressed its price control policy is only ’temporary’ and this will probably be lifted, at least partially, after the New Year festivities. As the same journal points out: ”Officials insist that the new food price controls are simply an effort to overcome malfunctions in the market, not a retreat to socialist economic planning diktats. Nor is China the only Asian country taking action in the face of rising food prices: Malaysia rationed cooking oil last month, while Indonesia is subsidizing edible oil refineries to keep retail prices down. Beijing’s moves include curbing exports of wheat, corn, and rice powder in an effort to boost domestic supply and dampen price increases.” [The Christian Science Monitor, 1 February]


But the massive crop failures suffered this winter will increase the pressures on Wen’s government, insuring that food price inflation, which ran at a monthly rate of 18.2 percent in November, continues to top the list of public concerns. And no amount of media ’spin’ and propaganda will stop a groundswell of criticism in coming months over the government’s handling of this crisis and the real causes of a spectacular infrastructural breakdown.


As socialist Chen Lizhi explains, ”The lessons from the winter crisis are clear. What’s needed is massive new investment in public services and particularly in rural areas focusing on agricultural development, but using this as a spur to industrial development in the inland provinces. There must be a shift away from today’s one-sided dependence on exports. This would allow tens of millions who are now ’industrial nomads’ to live at home, and work nearby home, enjoying a better standard of living. But this is only possible on the basis of workers and farmers democratically planning production and putting an end to privatisation and profiteering.”


Despite the ominous start to the Year of the Rat, chinaworker.info wishes its readers and all socialists and labour activists a happy holiday. These events can only convince more and more people to join the struggle for an end to capitalist chaos and for a democratic socialist future.