Some Of China’s Freed Labor Activists Start New Lives, But State Pressure Lurks



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People hold banners at a demonstration in support of Jasic Technology factory workers, outside Yanziling police station in Pingshan district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, on Aug. 6, 2018.

Sue-Lin Wong/Reuters




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Sue-Lin Wong/Reuters


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But analysts say the students’ commitment to social justice posed a threat to the legitimacy of China’s ruling Communist Party, which since the late 1970s has introduced reforms that unleashed economic growth but also extreme inequality. The state does not tolerate criticism of its policies and considers any form of collective organizing, including independent union work, politically dangerous.

«Especially given that [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping has reasserted the role of Marxism in education and official ideology, the state wants to keep a very tight grip on defining the terms of the debate,» said Eli Friedman, an expert on labor in China at Cornell University.

Friedman explains the activists’ union work highlighted deficiencies where the Chinese Communist Party has not upheld its own socialist commitments: «Students trying to organize with workers, while aggressively framing the struggle in Marxist political terms, poses a real threat to ideological monopoly,» he says.

Many of the activists and students arrested throughout 2018 and 2019 were eventually released. Some even returned to Peking University, where a handful are still finishing their degrees, according to a former member of the now-disbanded Marxist Studies Society. The former society member did not want to be named for fear of further retaliation by the state.

But some activists were detained for more than a year in unknown circumstances. Last January, police showed some Peking University students videos of missing student activists where they confessed to working for an «illegal organization» and for «creating a negative impact on society.»

Fellow activists said the videos were forced confessions made under duress. Rights groups say Chinese authorities routinely pressure activists in detention, where they can extract forced confessions on tape, and often publicly broadcast them.

Aiding security officials in shutting down the Jasic unionization effort was a legal power approved in 2012, which allows them to indefinitely detain suspects in national security cases under «residential surveillance at a designated location» — a form of house arrest where the location of the person is kept secret.


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While under house arrest, some of the detained activists were subjected to intense pressure to give up their activism, say two acquaintances who spoke to NPR.

According to the acquaintance of a released activist, officials told the activist «a comrade they had worked with and deeply admired was actually a demagogue trying to manipulate them for his personal political ambitions.»

An alleged written confession from this «demagogue» was presented to the activist as evidence, said the acquaintance. NPR could not ascertain whether this confession was written voluntarily.

Another former Jasic activist alleged to another acquaintance that Chinese state agents brought in the activist’s mother, professors they had admired and former high school teachers while they were held in residential surveillance. Each person implored the activist, through guilt and shame, to give up their work.

«They told me I had achieved nothing in my activism other than hurt workers and my fellow comrades,» the former activist told NPR through an acquaintance. «They also told me that since I did not resolutely resist appearing in the confession video, my public reputation was completely damaged and people would not respect or listen to me anymore if I speak up for my cause again in the future.»

Earlier this year, the former activist was released and given a state job under a pseudonym at a salary they described as «above average.» They have made no attempt to contact their former activist circles since being released.



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