Oh God, oh shit, I said I wasn’t going to do it. I said I wasn’t going to start a China struggle session. Already getting flashbacks to the Discord.
But something just doesn’t sit right with me and wanted to get some clarification here…
My question is this: why does China ban labor organizing/unions?
Is this yikes/intentional/actually a good thing?
(Yeah, I do know that labor unions are not always unequivocally good and sometimes they act more like middle management than as representatives of the workers… but democratizing the workplace seems like a no-brainer for any socialist project.)
Thoughts?
Because organising threatens stability; it’s the same reason why they censor stuff like terrorist attacks for the Han population. There are enough examples in Chinese history where organising can get out of hand and the CPC is extremely keen to stop that from happening. In the COVID-19 response, there was popular mobilisation and people were alarmed to see community volunteers wearing red armbands like those worn by the Red Guards.
People in social media were complaining that some of the actions of community volunteers were going too far. I had a video example from Weibo of one such volunteer harassing another dude just for wearing shorts. Unfortunately, I just checked and it seems that the account associated with it has gone private.
So in other words, there’s no actual institutional opposition to these community organizations.
