Iron man Xi eyes last shreds of dissent

Two stories out of China in the past few days — one given wide international publicity, the other not so much — both aimed at stifling what little dissent remains in this increasingly autocratic and intolerant society.

First the inevitable announcement that the Communist Party will agree to President Xi Jinping remaining in office after his second five-year term expires, removing the constitutional clause that would otherwise force him to retire.

We could all see that coming. Xi has spent his first term gradually tightening his grip on the country. His much publicised war on corruption was nothing more than a planned campaign to rid him of serious rivals. In a country where corruption is endemic, he simply had to choose the right targets.

The fact he made no attempt to groom a successor as past leaders have done finally made his intentions crystal clear. The rubber-stamp Chinese Parliament will be no barrier to his ambitions.

The sycophants have been lined up to promote the decision, with the usual comments about the need for “strong leadership” and “stability”. Why these qualities cannot be found elsewhere in a country of 1.3 billion people is, of course, not canvassed.

No amount of soothing words can hide the fact this is a power grab by a man who, in the tradition of dictators such as Joseph Stalin and Robert Mugabe, has convinced himself his country cannot do without him.

Some observers believe he sees himself as the Mao Zedong for the 21^st century. History tells us that Mao made a host of mistakes during his long and unfettered leadership that threw the nation into chaos on more than one occasion.

This appears to have been conveniently forgotten by the legislators apparently eager to hand over supreme power to a single individual for an indefinite period.

The second story comes out of Hong Kong with a proposal by the largest pro-Beijing Party in the Special Administrative Region’s Legislative Council that young people be allowed to serve in the mainland’s Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).

In the one area of China that still maintains some semblance of democracy, this can be seen as a convenient way of dealing with Hong Kong’s disaffected youth who regularly take to the streets to protest at what they see as the steady erosion of their freedoms.

Beijing still feels the need to move carefully here and its Hong Kong agent, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, has been quick to emphasise that service would be voluntary — but once the concept is established that could easily change.

The PLA is no longer the peasant force of former decades and a career could have attractions to some, especially with incentives such as tuition subsidies for further education as a reward for service.

As one commentator said, it might be considered more rewarding than flipping burgers at McDonalds or selling pay television subscriptions to people on the street.

Even so, signing up would also require pledging absolute loyalty to the Chinese flag and the Communist Party and this might be too much for the city’s turbulent youth to swallow.

However, in a contest of wills between supporters of Hong Kong’s freedoms outlined in its 1996 Basic Law and the new iron man in Beijing, it is not hard to see who would win out in the end.   

Changing values in a brave new world

Some years ago an elderly friend told me about the time her husband applied for a job in the Australian Public Service after leaving the army at the end of World War II.

Then in his mid-20s, he was delighted to be told he had been accepted. The next question was “do you want to retire at 60 or 65?”

The assumption then, and for many years after, was that the first job would also be the last. You would start off in a relatively lowly position and work your way through the ranks until you reached as far as your abilities could take you and there you would stay until you left the workforce.

In my profession there have been instances of the newspaper’s copy boy who rose to become its editor, elsewhere the chairman of the board who began by running messages. Stirring tales of loyalty, dedication and grinding hard work.

We know that it’s all very different today; what is surprising is the speed at which the changes have taken place. The attitudes I have described above existed well into the 1990s and in some cases beyond.

What is truly disturbing, and even frightening to some, is that these changes continue to accelerate to the extent that some educational institutions are advertising courses for jobs they say do not yet exist — how they can possibly know the requirements of such occupations is another matter.

It is no coincidence that with the decline of unionism, Governments have jumped on board the change bandwagon. ‘Flexibility’ and ‘job ready’ are the catch calls of Ministers for Employment around the world; universities must no longer educate their students for a rich and fulfilling life, only for the workplace.

Schools are being dragooned into emphasising science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects, the practitioners of which Governments are continually telling us, will rule the future world.

Children who are simply turned off at the thought of these subjects might still prosper if they have a bent for languages, but heaven help the rebel who wants to study English literature, medieval history or philosophy.

In Australia Ministers thump their chests and point to 16 months of job creation, neglecting to mention that a third of these are classed as ‘part time’, which can mean anything from three days a week in a Government Department to weekends in a retail outlet.

 ‘Under-employment’ is a phrase Governments do not like to mention.

In a world where we are constantly told to download this or that app, or store things in the cloud, where industry ‘disruptors’ are in great demand, it is well to remember there are still people alive, many highly educated, who do not own a computer and would not know how to access the internet if they had one.

This is not an argument against change, or even for slowing its pace, rather a warning that education should not be narrowed down to studies on how to code the next app.

The brave new world that is opening up before us suggests that technology is as much part of the problem as its solution. Without the moderating influence of good class humanities educations the future could be dark indeed.

Defamation weapon used against workers

In what is believed to be a first for Thailand, a court in Bangkok is hearing a defamation trial against 14 migrant workers from Myanmar.

Their offence is simply to have claimed they were overworked and underpaid which, given the treatment of migrant labour in the country, almost goes without saying.

Thammakaset, the owner of the Thai chicken farm where they worked, filed a complaint claiming the workers’ actions had cost the company business; that they had defamed the company and given false information to public officials, offences that could land them in jail.

Thammakaset said Betagro, a multinational company to which it supplied meat, had cut its ties as a result of the publicity surrounding the case.

The workers’ defence lawyer said they had been forced to work 20-hour days without overtime, lived in squalid conditions and had their passports confiscated.

“The workers just filed a complaint because they thought their rights were violated and asked for an independent body to investigate," the lawyer said.

A ruling on the case is not expected for several weeks.

Migrant workers are not allowed to belong to trade unions, and often the only avenue open to them is to turn whistle-blower and appeal to human rights activists.

The case is significant because if successful, employers may see the defamation weapon as an effective way of silencing worker complaints.

In Thailand’s corporate culture, judges may well regard damage to companies’ reputations as a more serious offence than labour exploitation – especially if non-Thai citizens are the only ones involved.

Sonja Vartiala, Director of Finnwatch, a Finnish civil rights group that regularly reports on labour issues in Thailand, said the workers were being punished for speaking out about the abuses they had suffered.

“It is simply wrong and points to serious problems in Thailand’s defamation laws,” Ms Vartiala said.

Workers from Myanmar, which borders Thailand, make up the majority of millions of migrant workers in the country, employed in fishing fleets, factories and farms.