Remembering the Feminist Five

The Feminist Five was the name given to the five women activists who were detained on March 7, 2015 on the eve of International Women's Day for planning an event in several cities to spread awareness about sexual harassment on public transit in China. Those five are Li Tingting (also known as Li Maizi), Wang Man, Wei Tingting, Wu Rongrong, and Zheng Churan.  They were eventually released after 37 days in detention but the charges against them have yet to be withdrawn.

On the first anniversary of their detention, a number of the Five made public statements about continuing the fight on Facebook and YouTube, accompanied by media articles and events about their cause and expressions of support from the international community. It's encouraging to see their defiant spirit in the face of the repression they've experienced. Below I've collated some of the postings, speeches, articles and events that have taken place in the last week in remembrance of the Feminist Five. I'm sure we'll be hearing more from them soon.

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Here's a Facebook post from Li Tingting dressed as Rosie the Riveter, and her statement on the first anniversary of her detention and its significance for the women's movement in China. She notes rightly that the detention had the ironic but important effect of getting their work to a larger audience both in China and in the international community.

Today is a special day. It's one year anniversary of ‪#‎freethefive‬.

2015 boasts to be a significant for the development of the feminism movement. I’d like to express my gratitude again to our government for pushing the feminist movement in China to another peak. We five sisters suffered a lot in the past, but at last we are free.

What happened to us had enormous impacts in China and overseas. It was actually the first time that the international community knew that there are real feminists in China. Therefore, the connection between the feminists from China and the other countries was enhanced. As a matter of fact, the sisterhood of us five played a key role in the process of the action of anti-sexual harassment.

So why did the Young Feminism Activists emerged in China in 2012? It is because the strategy of the feminists in the academic circle to advocate gender equality in the mild way has been proved ineffective. We thus need a more intense way to break the stereotyped feministm movement. However, since such determination was deficient in the system and the academic circle, the young feminism activists finally stood out.

With the “occupation of the men’s room” as a start, the young feminists who are given the title of “feminism activists” have taken numerous high-profile actions: From the bloody bride, we appeal Chinese ppl to pay close attention to the domestic violence; from the occupation of men’s room, we appeal the public to pay attention to the inequality of the number of the toilet cubicles between the men’s and women’s lavatory. The women group in China thus is given more right of speech. Besides, changes have been taken place in the policies such as the extension of the women’s lavatory.
Surely, what we did was under the rigorous surveillance of the police. The feminists have been under various investigations frequently. On March 7, 2015, after the “Feminism Five Girls” were detained and then released, the street action of us have been forbidden. Now no one dares to appear in the public occasions. At present, the Young Feminism Activist are confronted with new challenges and new missions.

How far can we go in the future? We have made attempts to open up a new path, for example, cooperating with the market and proposing the anti-forced marriage topic. In China, patriarchal system, as one of the forms of paternity, strictly restrains the young people. Every time when the single young people return to their hometown, they would be forced to get married soon by their parents, which confuse them a lot. Aiming at the phenomenon, we initiated anti-forced marriage movement: we funded an advertisement position, promoting that single life could also be happy. We do not have to build up a family and make compromise to the mainstream family values to live a happy life.

Like all the social movements, the Chinese feminist movement has experienced climaxes and bottoms. Although it is greatly restrained at present, we believe that the feminism activists in China will promote it with our wisdom and brave heart.

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YouTube statements by Li Tingting (in English), Wurongrong (in Chinese), and Zheng Churan (in English).

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More postings about the Feminist Five can also be found on the Facebook page, Free Chinese Feminists.

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A great article by Didi Kirsten Tatlow of The New York Times that puts it all in context.

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An event held at Fordham University:

Crackdown on China's Feminist Five: One Year On
March 7, 2016 12:30 PM - 2:30PM
Location: Room 2-01A, Fordham Law School, 150 W. 62nd St. New York, NY 10023

The Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers are pleased to host a discussion with Chinese women’s rights advocates, U.S. academics and activists. One year after the detention of China’s Feminist Five right before International Women’s Day, join us over lunch for an update on the latest developments in women’s rights and the crackdown on feminist activists and female lawyers in China. The speakers' bios are below. RSVP is required, as space will be limited.

SPEAKERS:

Lu Pin is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and Chief Editor of Feminist Voices, the most popular social media account on feminism in Chin. She used to be a senior journalist on women's rights and has been working for NGOs focused in gender equality in China since 1999. She has worked with China's Feminist Five for four years.

Wang Zheng is a Professor of Women's Studies and History, and a Research Scientist at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan. Professor Wang's publications focus on feminism in China, both in terms of its historical development and its contemporary activism, as well as changing gender discourses in relation to China's socioeconomic, political and cultural transformations. Wang Zheng is the director of the U.S.-China Gender Studies program that collaborates with Chinese universities on developing women's and gender studies in China. She actively advocated for the Feminist Five’s release last March.

Sharon Hom is the Executive Director of Human Rights In China and Professor of Law Emerita at CUNY School of Law. A participant of Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, she was named one of the “50 Women to Watch” by the Wall Street Journal in 2007.

Lu Jun is a Visiting Scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University School of Law, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Beijing-based anti-discrimination NGO Yirenping Center, and a winner of the Italian Pino Puglisi Prize. Lu Jun initiated Yirenping’s women’s rights program together with three of the Feminist Five.

MODERATOR:

Elisabeth Wickeri is the Executive Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.

The Fight Against Inequality: Martin Luther King and China's Labor Activists

The issue of inequality is arguably the central issue of our time. On this last day of February, I can’t let January (MLK’s birthday) and February (Black History Month in the U.S.) go by without making a connection between Martin Luther King and China's labor activists. The two seem like strange bedfellows but both have fought long and hard for the one percent to share more of its wealth with the 99 percent.

Many Americans know that King was assassinated in 1968 on April 4, but few know that he was assassinated in Memphis where he had gone to support a strike by sanitation workers. Many know King as a civil rights leader, but few know him as a democratic socialist who was broadening his activism beyond racial and religious lines to take on the issue of economic justice.  In 1968, he and the Southern Leadership Religious Conference (SLRC) began the organizing a Poor People’s Campaign to call attention to the problem of poverty in the U.S. and worldwide. That campaign took him to Memphis in that fateful month of April where he was shot in the neck on the balcony of his motel at the tender age of 39.

Few people also know that one of the signal events in modern Chinese labor history was a strike by more than 200 sanitation workers in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in August of 2014. The workers went on strike because the management company that employed them decided not to renew their street cleaning contract with the district government. When the management company refused to talk to the workers about severance pay and their future employment prospects, the workers went on strike.

With the help of a local labor NGO, the Panyu Workers Center, the workers organized, elected representatives and approached the management company with their demands. When the company again refused to talk, the workers went on strike. Soon after, with the encouragement of local government and union officials, the workers representatives and management company sat down and came to a collective bargaining agreement in which the management company agreed to a severance package that totaled nearly three million yuan (about U.S.$476,000). 

Several things made this case unusual and important in the annals of Chinese labor history. One was that workers succeeded in getting a collective bargaining agreement in an authoritarian country where the official union stands on the side of the government and management and does not engage in collective bargaining on behalf of workers. Second, the local authorities and unions encouraged the workers and management to negotiate, instead of arresting or firing the workers for striking as is the norm in China. Third, the workers received support from other sectors of society - local students, journalists and other members of the public.

In his speech to the striking Memphis sanitation workers on February 12, 1968, King sought to lift the spirits of an overflow crowd with words that would have sounded familiar to the Chinese sanitation workers in Guangzhou[1].

“You are doing many things here in this struggle. You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor….One day our society must come to see this. One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive… All labor has dignity.

 

But you are doing another thing. You are reminding, not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. And I need not remind you that this is our plight as a people all over America.

Now you are doing something else here. You are highlighting the economic issue. You are going beyond purely civil rights to questions of human rights. That is a distinction.

Now let me say a word to those of you who are on strike. You have been out now for a number of days but don’t despair. Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice…. Let it be known everywhere that along with wages and all of the other securities that you are struggling for, you are also struggling for the right to organize and be recognized.

We can all get more together than we can apart; we can get more organized together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power.  Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to affect change, and we need power.”

The story of U.S.-China relations over the last 30 years can be read as the story of how inequality was accelerated within and across borders. The tremendous growth in trade and investment between the U.S. and China led to the hollowing out of industrial urban centers in the U.S., and the lifting of hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. In the process, wealth became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few in both countries. China, in particular, went from a relatively egalitarian country to one of the most unequal countries in the world. 

The Guangzhou sanitation strike is, in a sense, a natural product of this decidedly unnatural inequality in a communist country. It is also a product of a growing consciousness among Chinese workers of their rights and their collective strength, or as King noted, their power to induce change.  In King’s words, “never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor. It is something that must be demanded by the oppressed.”

King’s universal language would have resonated deeply with the Guangzhou sanitation workers. It’s unfortunate that he did not live to see their achievement, one victory on the battlefield in the long war on inequality. He would have been only 86.

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[1] “All Labor Has Dignity,” in Cornel West, ed., The Radical King (Boston: Beacon Press).

The Regenerative Power of Civil Society

I’ve always been more of an optimist when it comes to the future of civil society in China, even in these dark days under Xi Jinping’s rule. In early March of 2015, I wrote the response below to some hand-wringing among academics about the growing restrictions on labor NGOs and activists. Soon after I wrote this, five women activists around China were detained in a coordinated high-level campaign, and then about nine months later, a number of labor activists were interrogated and some detained and criminally charged. So was I wrong? I don’t think so. Re-reading this response, I think it’s as relevant as it was when I wrote it about a year ago. My point then and now is that we need to be more attentive to the organic way in which civil society multiplies and regenerates itself. Indeed, months later, some of these same women activists, who were released after a month in detention, have gone back to working on the same issues they were working on prior to their detention, and for all I know they may have found a few more supporters, and I’m confident the same will be true of some the labor activists.

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March 2, 2015

At a macro level, the recent campaign against lawyers and activists in China is not sustainable, nor is it meant to be sustainable. In this sense, the crackdown is not the “new normal”. It is instead a means to an end. What that end is remains to be seen, whether it’s laying the foundation for the reforms laid out in Xi Jinping’s ambitious Third Plenum Decision, or revitalising the relationship between the party-state and society, or strengthening China’s national sovereignty and security, or perhaps all three. Those are the new normal, not the crackdown. 

The end is not, as some people believe, the eradication of civil society. If that is the end, then the Xi Jinping administration has a lot more work to do but I don’t believe that is a priority.  The leadership has too many other burning issues to attend to than try to stamp out pesky activists - the economy, the anticorruption campaign, territorial and sovereignty issues on its periphery, and North Korea come to mind. Nor am I saying Xi Jinping is a closet liberal who will turn around to save civil society. He wants to save and strengthen the party and the nation, not civil society. But if Xi Jinping’s affirmation of “social governance” in his Third Plenum Decision’s is still valid, then there’s still a chance that he is willing to work with civil society if it helps him achieve his larger goals.

At a more micro level, I wish journalists and academics would do more to recognise the hard work of civil society activists and organisations on the ground and their achievements rather than their setbacks. Activists, NGOs and lawyers seem to attract more attention and support for being repressed than for making progress. No disrespect to the journalists which have done a great job covering China under tight deadlines and editorial demands, but if I was just trying to understand China by reading the media, I’d wonder how civil society could make any progress at all on the ground because it always seems be getting shut down.

To illustrate the power of the media, I always think about people I met when I was reviving the English version of China Development Brief whose founder, Nick Young, was barred from China in 2007. When I told them in 2011 or 2012 that I was working for CDB, many would tell me that they read CDB’s newsletter and would cite some piece from the pre-2007 days. Well you know, I would say, that was the old CDB, but you know there’s now this new CDB and it’s not the same as the old one. I could tell though it was hard for them to get their mind around this piece of information. It was like once the media reported that Nick had been barred, CDB ceased to exist in the minds of many people.

The reality is that in China, as I’m sure happens in other countries, detaining activists and lawyers and closing down NGOs is like the whack-a-mole game. They just pop up in other forms. Or maybe a better analogy is to understand these civil society actors as an organism. Hurting that organism, killing some of its cells, is only a temporary setback because over time that organism will grow new cells to replace the ones that died. Just as I was able to resurrect the old English-language CDB through the Chinese-language CDB that had spun off of the English-language organization and had managed to survive the closing down of Nick’s operation. Count that as yet another achievement of civil society. Once it begins to multiply, it’s very difficult to exterminate.

Ironically, this seemingly novel way of looking at civil society is applied to uncivil society actors, or what we might call bad civil society, such as terrorist organizations and networks. We often hear how killing leaders of an organization like Al Qaeda may not be that be that effective because other leaders and cells will arise to take their place. How prophetic that insight has become! But it’s that not great of a leap to say the same of civil society actors.

I recognise that there are exceptions to this tendency in the media to play up the negative, but the grand narrative plays in favor of seeing activists and NGOs as weak and powerless rather than as fighters, objects to be pitied rather than admired. Progress made by civil society is rarely reported, whereas their failures almost always are.

I think our myopia with regard to civil society is one reason we are often caught off guard when social movements succeed in causing a political rupture, as in the Solidarity movement in Poland, Arab Spring in North Africa, and the democratic opening in Myanmar. Experts very rarely predict these events. They end up trying to explain them using the benefit of hindsight, working backwards from the rupture to see what they had missed. But maybe if we were more attentive to following the various ways in which civil society multiplies and regenerates, we might have more forewarning of when a rupture is coming.

Cao Yaxue's article on Guo Jianmei and the closure of Zhongze Women's Legal Counseling Center

Cao Yaxue, the founder of the ChinaChange website, has written a nice, in-depth article detailing the work and accomplishments of Guo Jianmei and her legal aid NGO over the last 20 years, and possible reasons for the order to close Zhongze. In that article, she also cites Guo's Wechat message saying that her Qianqian Law Firm is still in operation.

The End of the Road for Guo Jianmei's Zhongze Women's Legal Counseling and Service Center?

The New York Times (see the text below) has reported that Guo Jianmei's Zhongze Women's Legal Counseling and Service Center (formerly the Beijing University Women's Law Studies and Legal Aid Center), has been ordered to close. It's not clear whether the law firm she established in 2009, Qianqian, will also close.

In March 2010, the center lost its Beijing University affiliation that it had enjoyed for more than 10 years. At that time, many people thought that her center was being closed down, but Jianmei just moved her office to a new location and re-registered the center under its current name, taking out any reference to Beijing University. It's unclear whether the center will have a life beyond Zhongze, and where Jianmei and her staff will go from here.

Here's the blog post I wrote back in 2010 that includes a long public statement by Jianmei and her staff about the center's work and accomplishments. They are worth reading again to understand why the closing of this center will be a loss for advocates of women's rights in China.

China Is Said to Force Closing of Women’s Legal Aid Center

Sinosphere

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW JAN. 29, 2016

 

BEIJING — The Chinese authorities have ordered a leading women’s legal aid center in Beijing to shut down operations, the center’s founder said on Friday, another sign of a continuing crackdown on civil society.

As word spread of the closing of the Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling and Service Center, many women’s rights advocates expressed shock. The center was highly symbolic for having been born of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, a moment when China, struggling to be accepted internationally after the 1989 military suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square, loosened controls on civil society activities.

Employees at the center, which is led by Guo Jianmei, a charismatic lawyer, were huddled on Friday afternoon to discuss the order. “We have a lot of things to deal with,” Ms. Guo said.

No reason was given for the order. A notice on the center’s website read: “Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling Service Center (formerly the Center for Women’s Law Studies and Legal Services of Peking University) will take a rest from Feb. 1, 2016. Thank you everyone for your attention and constant support for the center in the past!”

Ms. Guo’s center was first set up in late 1995 at Peking University, her alma mater. Its name changed after the university shut it down in 2010 and Ms. Guo moved it to an apartment in north Beijing.

“It looks like they are trying to crush all people with any influence,” said a longtime women’s rights campaigner who requested anonymity while discussing a politically sensitive matter. “As far as well-known people go today, it’s ‘kill one and scare 100’ to make sure no one else tries to do anything. Controls on thought and speech are intensifying. The repression of lawyers and NGOs is growing.”

The move comes just four months after China showcased its achievements on women’s rights at festivities at the United Nations in New York honoring the 20th anniversary of the Beijing conference that were opened by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. His wife, Peng Liyuan, also attended the event, delivering a speech in English on women’s rights that attracted considerable attention.

 

Gender equality is official Chinese government policy. In September, the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a white paper titled “Gender Equality and Women’s Development in China,” which highlighted the importance of “effectively mobilizing social resources” as part of “China’s national mechanism for promoting the status of women.”

The closing of the center signifies a tightening of the restrictions on civil society because its work helping women in domestic violence, child custody, land rights and employment disputes had long been tolerated by the government, said Maya Wang, a researcher on China with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.

“That it is possible for her to be a target for closure is a significant indication of the government’s crackdown on civil society,” Ms. Wang said.

“She’s not a lawyer in a law firm that was taking very sensitive cases,” Ms. Wang said, referring to a crackdown on the legal profession that has led to the detention of about 250 lawyers, legal workers and activists since last summer.

The Latest Updates on Civil Society-Related NPC Legislation

Last month, the 18^th Session of the NPC Standing Committee met and approved two laws that are particularly relevant to civil society. One is the Counterterrorism Law (反恐怖主义法, sometimes translated as the Anti-Terrorism or Counterespionage Law) which will go into effect on January 1, 2016, and the other is the Anti-Domestic Violence Law (反家庭暴力法, also translated as the Domestic Violence Law) which will go into effect on March 1, 2016.

The Counterterrorism Law

The Counterterrorism Law is part of a slew of security-related legislation (see Table 1) that appeared in 2014-15 and reflects the Xi Jinping administration’s effort to take a comprehensive approach to tackling terrorism and other perceived national security threats.  These laws have been criticized by foreign media, business and civil society groups and governments for giving Chinese authorities greater powers to restrict and control the activities of non-state actors.

The Counterterrorism Law was controversial when the first draft was issued for public comment in November of 2014 because it defined terrorism in vague and open-ended terms, and required foreign telecommunications and technology companies to provide their encryption keys to Chinese authorities, install security “backdoors” that would give those authorities surveillance access, and keep their servers and user data in China.  Due to pushback by foreign technology and internet companies and foreign leaders such as U.S. President Obama, the third reading was delayed and further revisions made to the draft law. The final draft removed language defining terrorism as “thought”, and took out the requirement for companies to provide encryption keys and keep their servers and user data in China, although it still requires companies to provide assistance with encryption information upon the request of law enforcement authorities.

The Counterterrorism Law’s legislative journey may provide some insights into the prospects for the Overseas NGO Management Draft Law (境外非政府组织管理法，also translated as the Foreign NGO Management Law) which had a similar rocky reception among foreign civil society and business groups and governments and has also been held up.  The Counterterrorism Law’s passage in somewhat revised form showed that public comments and concerns were taken into account but that demands for more significant revisions were trumped by national security considerations.  If that is any indication, then the more likely scenario for the Overseas NGO Law is that it will pass in early 2016 with some of the more controversial provisions removed, but with the basic regulatory structure intact. The less likely scenario, although the one preferred by this author, is that more significant revisions are made, such as: 1) removing the requirement for the NGO to get approval from a professional supervisory agency (PSA) before registering; 2) or failing that, to expand qualified PSAs to include organizations other than government bodies; 3) removing the requirement for Overseas NGOs that want to work in China but not set up a representative office to obtain a one-year temporary permit; and of course 4) changing the registration body from Public Security back to Civil Affairs.

Table 1: Timetable of security-related NPC legislation

	1st reading	2nd reading	3rd reading	Approved
Counterterrorism Law	November 3, 2014 (public comments)	March, 2015	??	Dec 24, 2015
National Security Law	December 2014 (internal)	May 7, 2015 (public comments)	July 1, 2015	July 1, 2015
Overseas NGO Management Law	December 22, 2014 (internal)	May 5, 2015 (public comments)	N/A	N/A
Cybersecurity Law	July 6, 2015 (public comment)	N/A	N/A	N/A

  

The Anti-Domestic Violence Law

The Anti-Domestic Violence Law has been years in the making and its passage on December 27, 2015 now makes an issue that was long viewed as a private matter a responsibility of the state.  The Law is also one of the few pieces of legislation where we can see the imprint of civil society groups whose input led to improvements in the final draft which expanded the definition of domestic violence to include both physical and psychological violence, and violence between “people living together”, and not just married couples. Critics though point out that the law does not include sexual violence and is unclear on whether “people living together” include people in homosexual relationships. Civil society groups will of course also play an important part in ensuring that the Law is implemented, enforced and improved upon.

What’s Been Going On with the Charity Law?

One final legislative update is that the Charity Law （慈善法）had its second reading at the December session of the NPC Standing Committee, after the first draft was released for public comments at the end of October (see Table 2). As my November 29 post discussed, this draft law should be viewed favorably for creating a more enabling environment for charity organizations.  The second draft appears to have made further beneficial revisions, in particular by removing the geographical restrictions on online fundraising, and being more specific about tax benefits for charitable organizations.

Table 2: Timetable of other civil society-related NPC legislation

	1st reading	2nd reading	3rd reading	Approved
Anti-Domestic Violence Law	November 25, 2014 (State Council, public comments)	August 2015 (NPC, public comments)	October 2015	December 27, 2015
Charity Law	October 2015 (public comments)	December 2015	N/A	N/A

A 2016 New Year's Message from China's Labor Rights Defenders

Below I repost the Chinese original and the English translation of an important and eloquent New Year's Message from some of China's labor rights defenders at a time when those defenders are coming under a fierce, high-level attack that has resulted in dozens of labor activists monitored, interrogated and detained. To date, the seven activists mentioned below are still in detention and have not been allowed to see their lawyers. An earlier draft of this translation was posted on China Change. Here I post the final version of that translation.

In a Vast and Frozen Land, Spring Arrives in All Its Glorious Color: A 2016 New Year's Message from China's Labor Rights Defenders

Dear Fellow Workers and Compatriots: Happy New Year!

Towards the end of 2015, China’s labor rights defenders experienced an unprecedented attack. A group of activists who have dedicated years to defending the rights and interests of workers were detained, monitored and interrogated by the police. It could have been a moment for fear and paranoia to set in. But labor activists and people from other walks of life responded quickly by drafting a petition to the Communist Party Central Committee, National People's Congress and State Council. The petition described in no uncertain terms the severe and widespread violations of workers' rights and interests over the last few decades, and the inevitable emergence of independent labor NGOs and worker centers and their valuable contribution to the protection of labor rights and social justice, and demanded the release of the detained activists. In less than two weeks, over 490 people added their names to this petition, and over 60 Chinese lawyers joined a legal aid team. This response was followed by petitions, appeals and demonstrations by over 200 organizations and thousands of individuals from the international labor and academic community in over 40 countries condemning the crackdown and expressing support for the arrested labor activists. Their calls however fell on the deaf ears of Chinese authorities. The detained activists have to this date still not been allowed to meet with their lawyers. In addition, the Communist Party's propaganda apparatus - the New China News Agency, People's Daily and China Central Television (CCTV) - launched a smear campaign against these activists, in particular Zeng Feiyang (曾飞洋), essentially sentencing them without a trial in the court of public opinion. Feiyang's wife and child have been intimidated, and Zhu Xiaomei (朱小梅) has been separated from her baby daughter who was breastfeeding when she was detained. The families of the other detained activists - He Xiaobo (何晓波), Meng Han (孟晗), Peng Jiayong (彭家勇), Deng Xiaoming (邓小明) - are all sick with fear, and the whereabouts of another former worker-turned-collective bargaining specialist, Chen Huihai (陈辉海), is still unclear. Their treatment reflects a callous approach to the rule of law and legal and procedural fairness in criminal proceedings.

Fellow Workers and Compatriots, if the rights and interests of workers who make up the large majority of China's population cannot be protected, if workers are increasingly deprived of their economic, political, cultural and social rights, if the contradictions between officials and citizens, workers and capital, rich and poor, continue to worsen, then what is the  prospect of everyone living in a free, equal, fair, democratic, law-based society where "socialism is the core value"? It is doubtful that even our most basic survival and security can be assured in such a society! It follows then that defending and fighting for workers' rights and interests is not only essential for workers, but also to the stability, security, fairness and well-being of society as a whole. Labor rights activism is not a crime! Labor rights organizations have not committed any crime! Labor rights activists have not committed any crime! Not only are they are not guilty of any crime, they have also made great contributions to our society, state and nation. They are the underlying force behind a labor movement that has emerged in waves since 2010. They are why people from all walks of society are increasingly paying attention to, and supporting, the labor movement.

China’s 30 years of rapid economic growth is coming to an end, and its demographic and environmental dividend have been exhausted. At the same time, the social and historical contradictions hidden by economic growth are now becoming apparent. Government, businesses and workers face the dual burden of an economic recession and social instability, with workers bearing the greatest share: they gain the least in times of economic growth, and inevitably lose the most in the downturns. Not only are they the first to lose their jobs and become destitute, but as soon as they protest they are suppressed by the “stability maintenance” authorities.

How is it that the working class is destined to continually bear the costs of economic growth and recession? Why should the powerful classes reap the profits when the economy grows and let others take the hit while they do nothing in times of recession? In early 2015, some of China’s labor activists proposed a “New Deal for Workers” to the government, suggesting a reform of the system of wealth distribution, and the establishment of universal social insurance. Another option would be to boost domestic demand, but this would require government and businesses to give a bigger piece of the pie to workers and society. This type of policy helped the United States make it through the economic crisis of the 1930s, but do Chinese leaders have that kind of heart and will?

Fellow Workers and Compatriots, it is true that we wait on the government to appraise the situation and put forward the correct policy, but we also know that freedom, equality, justice, security and happiness are things that we cannot wait for; they can only be obtained by fighting for them. If we fight we may lose, but if we do not fight we gain nothing. In this new year, labor activism may face an even more severe threat. But we are convinced that the labor movement will follow its inherent tendency to progress from its infancy to a more mature form. The rights to organize, to engage in collective bargaining, and to strike, and workers’ economic, political, cultural and social rights, will all be achieved step by step.

"Strong grows the grass on plains rich with blood, across a vast and frozen land, spring arrives in all its glorious color." We labor rights defenders offer these lines of poetry as our New Year message and our outlook for 2016.

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寒凝大地发春华：中国劳工界2016年元旦献词 

亲爱的劳工兄弟姐妹和全国同胞：新年好！

        在2015年岁末雾锁神州、寒凝大地之际，劳工界遭遇前所未有的严厉打击，一批长年致力于维护劳工权益的公益人士被刑拘、监控和传唤，一时间风声鹤唳、草木皆兵！但劳工界和社会各界部分人士很快作出反应，发布致中共中央、全国人大、国务院意见书，痛陈数十年来劳工权益被严重和普遍侵犯的事实，阐释劳工NGO产生和发展的必然性和必要性，评估其工作对维护劳工权益和社会公平正义的价值和贡献，要求释放被捕劳工维权人士。短短十多天间，有490余人参与联署，60多名律师参加法律援助团。国际劳工界和学术界随之响应，超过40个国家的200多个团体和数千个人，以联署、请愿、游行等方式，表达其对此一打压行为的抗议和对被捕劳工维权人士的声援。然而，傲慢的权力置若罔闻，被捕者至今不得律师会见，新华社、人民日报、中央电视台还对他们加以污名抹黑、未审先判，曾飞洋的妻儿被吓病了，朱小梅还在哺乳期的女婴被饿瘦了，何晓波、孟晗、彭家勇、邓小明的家人无不处在忧心如焚的恐惧之中，而另一名工人出身的劳资集体谈判专家陈辉海，则依然处在莫名其妙的失联状况。依法治国、罪刑法定和程序公正，就这样碎成了一地鸡毛！  

劳工兄弟姐妹们、同胞们，如果占我国人口绝大多数的劳动者的基本权益得不到保障，如果对劳动者的经济、政治、文化和社会权利的剥夺日趋深重，如果官民对立、劳资对立、贵贱分化、贫富分化愈演愈烈，我们能指望大家生活在一个“社会主义核心价值观”所昭示的自由、平等、公正、民主、法治的社会环境中吗？岂止不能，恐怕连最起码的生存与安全也得不到保障！可见，维护和争取劳工权益，不仅对底层劳动者来说是天经地义的，对整个社会的稳定、安全、公平与福祉，也是须臾不可或缺的！劳工维权无罪！劳工维权机构无罪！劳工维权人士无罪！岂止无罪，其对整个社会、国家和民族的存在和发展，还建立了莫大的功勋！筑底线于土崩，挽狂澜于既倒，舍我劳工其谁焉？这就是为什么2010年以来劳工运动此起彼伏、前仆后继的深层原因，这也是为什么社会各界对劳工运动越来越关注和支持的根本原因。

中国经济持续三十多年的高速增长已经后继乏力，人口和环境“红利”将近耗尽，与此同时，经济增长掩盖下的社会矛盾和历史欠账逐一浮出水面，政府、企业和劳工面临着经济衰退和社会维稳的双重压力，而劳工承担其中最大的份量：在经济增长过程中他们所得最少，而在经济下行过程中必定所失最多，不仅要首先遭受失业和绝对贫困化的生存危机，而且一旦抗争，又会招来维稳体制的重压。

但是，难道劳工阶级就命中注定要无休无止地承受经济发展或衰退的所有代价和成本吗？凭什么有权有势的阶级在经济上升时获取暴利而在经济下行时做甩手掌柜呢？2015年初劳工界向政府建言以分配制度改革和建立覆盖全民的社会保障为核心的“劳工新政”，或许可以提振内需，但这需要政府和企业从既得利益中吐出一块来返还劳工和社会。这种做法曾经帮助美国渡过了20世纪30年代的经济大危机，中国的肉食者有没有这样的良知和担当呢？

  劳工兄弟姐妹们、同胞们，我们固然期待国家审时度势做出正确的决策，但我们也深知，自由、平等、公正、安全、幸福是等不来的，只能奋勇争取才会获得；争取或有所失，不争取必无所得。在新的一年里，劳工维权也许会面临更严峻的形势，但我们也坚信，劳工运动将会沿着其固有的趋势从低级阶段走向中级阶段和高级阶段。劳工的团结组织权、集体谈判权和罢工权，劳工的经济、政治、文化和社会权利，必将一步一步得到实现。

     雪沃中原肥劲草，寒凝大地发春华。就让这句诗成为劳工界的元旦献词和新年展望吧！