The Struggle of Fu Shenqi
China Rights Forum, Summer 1997
Shanghai activist Fu Shenqi has always been a path-breaker: at the time of the Democracy Wall Movement of the late 1970s he was already linking the struggle for democracy with workers' rights and then, soon after the crackdown on the 1989 student movement, he joined in the effort to establish an independent human rights organization in his home city. He was sent to jail three times for his pains, completing a three-year term of Reeducation Through Labor in 1996. He left China in September of that year, and now lives in New York.
Fu Shenqi: In my 'Manifesto For My Life,' written on my birthday in 1974, I declared: I have decided to struggle for justice and for the freedom and happiness of mankind. In 1975, I threw myself into social activism, and organized a reading circle. In 1976 I found a kindred spirit in Wang Shengyou; we began to organize an opposition group and an opposition movement. I was sent to prison three times over the next ten years.
Wang Yu: You were formerly a worker. I'd like to ask you to discuss the current situation of workers on the mainland.
Fu: From the point of view of human rights, Chinese workers never enjoyed the most basic civil rights. Freedom of assembly and association, the rights to demonstrate and strike - all are forbidden. All unions are officially controlled. If workers wish to organize their own unions or associations, or call a strike, and so on, these can all be labeled hostile actions and thus banned and suppressed. The phrase "the workers are the masters" is nothing but empty words.
When reforms began in 1979, the workers' position was weakened. Workers in the state enterprises faced a crisis - being laid off. Once laid off, a worker lost all social benefits; this meant that their survival itself was threatened. Even today there is still no system in China to defend the rights of workers who have lost their jobs. Previously, workers' basic subsistence was guaranteed under the system known colloquially as the "iron rice-bowl." Thus, in comparison with the past, the civil and political rights of workers have made no progress, and their social standing has slipped considerably.
Wang: Has the situation of workers in individual businesses or private enterprises shown any improvement by comparison?
Fu: It's just my personal opinion, but Shanghai workers in the joint-venture, foreign-invested and private enterprises can say their lives are quite good. However, in remote regions, in private industries or state industries which pass for private ones, the situation of workers is very poor. Salaries are kept to the bare minimum, and there are no social benefits; provisions for safety in the work environment are very bad, in fact, scarcely exist. There are frequent accidents and injuries, and the situation of miners is the worst of all.
Wang: How can the problems of workers be resolved?
Fu: Previously, the relationship of workers to factories was identical to that of workers to the state. Now this has changed. Workers not only have a relationship to the state, but also to a private boss, and possibly to a foreign enterprise as well. In addition, some Chinese workers are peasants: in the busy season in the countryside they work in the fields, and in slow seasons, they go and work for cash. Workers' relations to the workplace have become multifaceted.
Today Chinese workers are heterogeneous, and the interests of the society as a whole are complex. However, before the 1970s, the entire situation was more simple: Chinese workers belonged either to state or collective enterprises.
The current tensions between workers and factories have become an unavoidable problem. Laying off workers is proof of the failures of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it shows clearly that the reform of state industries not only has not worked, but in fact has made them worse. The problem of the ownership of the means of production has not been dealt with effectively. In the course of the reform process, the privileged class composed of linkage between business and government interests has gobbled up state property. The state is in debt, yet the government uses the people's savings to cover the debt. This process is an unending vicious circle. The wealth produced over decades by workers in the state enterprises has in fact been misappropriated. That kind of wealth should be the property of the workers, the common possession of workers. Yet workers have been made to suffer the consequences for the state's actions, and this is a great injustice.
In order to truly protect the interests of workers, China needs a supervised transition to a system of shareholder-owned companies, or a policy of privatization. Workers should be allowed to take part in the process of turning enterprises into joint-stock companies and to form independent trade unions. Ownership of property should be clarified; the workers who produced wealth for decades should not bear the burden of the state's debts. Workers should have unemployment insurance; the state has a duty to see to this. The current form of privatization is not just; it harms the interests of the workers.
PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS: A USEFUL STRATEGY
Wang: When the first elections in which independent candidates could stand were held in 1980, you decided to run for the position of workers' representative in the local people's congress. I'd like to ask you to discuss your experience and feelings on this matter. What caused you to come forward as a candidate? How do current democracy activists view elections?
Fu: At that time, the views of democracy activists with regard to elections fell into two categories. Some opposed participation in elections, as they felt it would only legitimize the CCP. They believed that the principal task should be to expose the hypocrisy of elections in China; involvement in them should be avoided. Others felt that we should make use of the opportunity to further the legal struggle: if possible, we should exercise the right to stand for election and strive to get elected as representatives of the people. Those without the conditions to run for office should use the right to vote to encourage the rest of the electorate to do their best to exercise their franchise.
I belonged to the second category, and so I decided to run for office. I threw myself into the campaign, hoping to have an effect on the society and widen my ability to influence society.
Wang: Do you feel that the influence you gained through taking part in the election was positive or negative?
Fu: I feel it was positive. At the beginning, many workers thought that this kind of election was a travesty, something you should not participate in or take seriously. But later, when the election activities were in full swing, even the people who held those opinions gradually came to feel that their ballots were significant. They came to look at the elections differently. That is, instead of viewing themselves as a kind of passive negation, they began to see themselves as an active affirmation. That is a process of developing a sense of self-consciousness. This kind of self-consciousness is precisely the starting point for a modern democratic life to come into existence.
Therefore, I feel that democracy activists should not just attack the elections held on the mainland and then consider that issue closed. On the contrary, this form of legal struggle should be used to the fullest possible extent; every drop of substantive content should be wrung from it, in order to further China's political democratization.
Wang: In the 1980 elections, quite a few university students who ran for office were elected, but none of the candidates you fielded from factories succeeded. Do you feel this is because the electorate looks up to intellectuals, or are there other reasons for this?
Fu: I think that a major reason was that the university students at that time, including Hu Ping and Xu Bangtai [who both stood for election in Beijing], did not form a distinct democratic opposition group, which the CCP would not have tolerated. However, the workers who stood for election, including He Depu, Wang Yifeng and I, were clearly dissident elements who stood outside the official political system, which was intolerable to the CCP.
Wang: You certainly must have many impressions about the experience of running for office. Could you discuss them?
Fu: There's a body of thought which says that the general educational level of the Chinese people is too low, so that Chinese are unable to accustom themselves to a democratic way of life, which is why our country cannot achieve a democratic system. However, our Chinese factory workers proved in the course of the elections that they possess the ability to exercise power democratically. During the entire electoral process our factory had no experience of personal verbal attacks on anyone. Thus, I feel that Chinese workers absolutely possess the capability for a democratic way of life, and that political reform is quite feasible.
In addition, I feel that, even if elections in China are still largely elections in name only, are still imperfect, they still have the advantage that they can serve to nurture the people's political self-consciousness and educate them about democracy. When I took part in the elections, I tried to mobilize every kind of energy and capability. I found that not only the energy of repressed opposition forces could be mobilized, but also I later tried to fully mobilize the energies of those who others considered backwards workers.
I also feel that even sham elections under a one-party dictatorship can have very positive practical results. The election of so many university students in the 1980 elections is proof of that.
SHANGHAI'S DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT
Wang: How did the birth and development of the Shanghai democracy movement differ from the experience of Beijing?
Fu: The development of the democracy movement in the two cities is very similar. Beijing had Yu Luoke; Shanghai had Wang Shengyou. [Yu Luoke was executed during the Cultural Revolution after his diary was confiscated and found to contain heterodox opinions; Wang Shengyou was arrested for writing political letters and was executed in 1978. Both cases became causes celebres demonstrating extremes of political persecution and people who stood up to it.] The timing was also similar in both cities. During the Democracy Wall movement in Beijing, the Shanghai democracy movement began to develop.
The scope of the movement in Shanghai at that time was very large. In 1978, people gathered in the tens of thousands; the demonstrations by educated youth [who had been sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution and wanted to return home to the cities] blocked the railway lines. It is because of the show of force by the large numbers of educated youth in the streets that almost all such people were eventually able to return to Shanghai.
The launching of the two movements was also very similar: the magazines were published, there were public discussions and big character posters were put up. At that time, I and some friends published a magazine called The Voice of Democracy.
After they began arresting people in Beijing in 1979, they arrested people in Shanghai, and the atmosphere became very repressive. Shanghai at that time also had Democracy Walls, one on the People's Square and one on Huaihai Road. The one on the People's Square was destroyed first, and then the one on Huaihai Road. Thus all at once a public movement came to an end. But the movement continued in Beijing.
Wang: When the movement was crushed in 1979, what activities did you choose to pursue in that suddenly oppressive atmosphere?
Fu: Facing suppression in 1979, I decided to resume publication of The Voice of Democracy with the third issue. In that issue we reported on the persecution of Ni Yuxian [a Shanghai Democracy Wall activist]. Once it was printed, the Public Security officials immediately came to close down the magazine, but I had already managed to send a number of copies out. The essays in the magazine were pasted up on the Xidan Democracy Wall in Beijing. When my situation in Shanghai loosened up a bit, I seized the opportunity to publish the fourth issue, and, using connections, sent it to the homes of some high-ranking cadres. In this way I managed until 1981, when, after the sixteenth issue, the magazine was shut down.
At that time Lin Muchen's Seagull resumed publication. Also a number of other publications appeared, including Rose Island and The Promising Generation.
I was arrested in 1981, and Lin Muchen after me. At present, although the democracy activists have been suppressed and the democracy movement is comparatively inactive, still the whole society, every layer, has continued to develop and go forward.
Wang: What did you Shanghai activists who had had experience in earlier movements do during the 1989 democracy movement?
Fu: In 1989, at the time of the democracy movement, I was still serving a period of deprivation of political rights. Furthermore, all someone who had been labeled a "counterrevolutionary" like me had to do was get involved in political activities, and I would immediately face severe repression, which could in addition have had a negative impact on the movement. Thus, my friends and I gave priority to getting to know people in the movement, and keeping ties to those actively involved. At that time Lin Muchen and Hu Kesi often got together with friends for meals at the "Cocoa Tree" bar to follow the situation and exert their influence. In fact, the efforts made at that time were useful for the revitalization of the movement in 1992 and 1993 in Shanghai.
Wang: Could you tell me about your feelings about being abroad and your activities here?
Fu: My decision to go abroad grew out of the feeling that I could no longer be of much use inside the country. No matter what I did, my activity would quickly be crushed, and my family would be destroyed. The goal of going abroad was to protect my family and continue my democracy work. Now I realize I was too simplistic: the economic pressure of life abroad is very great. It's very hard to both support a family and work for democracy.
There is an enormous degree of freedom abroad, and so I have resurrected the publication Responsibility in the form of an occasional, non-periodic publication. I hope to bring out an issue every 20-30 days. I am publishing this magazine as if I were publishing an underground magazine in some hidden corner of China. Responsibility in its present form has six pages an issue. I send it first to Tokyo and Hong Kong, and people carry it into China. Those who receive it can easily reproduce it and send it on to others. I send about 60 copies every time. After sending it out, I check how many people receive it, and a great many say they do. The magazine relies on friends inside China. My greatest hope is that in the future my major source of articles will be writings from China.
Wang Yu is the editor of the Chinese section of China Rights Forum. This article was translated by Elizabeth A. Cole.
