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THE old expression that if Wall Street sneezes, the world catches cold should be updated, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap.
Today, he says it would probably be more accurate to say that if China coughs, the world may catch double pneumonia. And he warns that China already shows signs of having the sniffles.
The Chinese economy is clearly creaking, but still relatively fast growing on the backs of a vast army of workers about whom most of us know very little. The common impression of China and of industrial relations in that country is that there exists a huge, low paid, highly regimented and largely docile workforce.
Bell maintains that while the workforce is certainly huge, low paid and still regimented, it is by no means docile. And he quotes Professor Mike Davis of the University of California as saying that President Xi Jinping may soon confront the largest labour rebellion in history.
Davis’ remark is included in a book, China on Strike, published this month in the United States. In a series of interviews with workers and their supporters on the ground, translated from the original Chinese, it paints a picture that Bell says has some echoes of South Africa’s recent labour past.
In a one-party state facing repression and censorship, waves of mainly young workers - many of them women - have not only challenged the system, they have managed to wrest concessions from both state and private corporations. Increasingly, they have shown the power of independent organisation in a country where only state-approved trade unions are condoned.
This, adds Bell, should be an object lesson to the union leaders and members of the SA Communist Party and the ANC who still see in China an alternative system pointing towards economic and social salvation.
It underlines the fact that we live in one world where we have yet to see an alternative to variations on the same systemic theme.
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