The human cost of China’s economic miracle
A large part of China’s remarkable economic development has been achieved at the expense of the basic rights of millions of former state-owned enterprise workers, states a new report released by the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin and Canada’s International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, commonly known as Rights & Democracy.
“No Way Out: Worker Activism in China’s State-Owned Enterprise Reforms” is based on five years of research. It draws extensively on China Labour Bulletin’s litigation in defence of worker’s rights.
The publication studies the many ways the restructuring and privatisation of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the last 20 years have violated the human rights of the workers laid-off in the process. Violations documented include the systematic exclusion of former SOE workers from official channels of redress, criminalisation of labour protests, and the denial of workers’ rights to social security, to an adequate standard of living, to freedom of association and to freedom from arbitrary detention.
You can access the report here.