Today's Washington Post has an article about Chinese workers at the Uniden Electronic Products factory in Shenzhen going on strike. The strike along with the Chinese government's response provides a wonderful example of irony. Uniden is Japanese-owned. But in spite of recent government-backed anti-Japanese protests (and in spite of China's Communist past), the Chinese government has firmly sided with the Japanese "owners of the means of production" as it opposes workers' attempts to form their own union. Key organizers of the strike have apparently "disappeared." It would be interesting to see what kind of "re-education" they are given. Are they sent to the U.S. and forced to work for Walmart for a year? Or perhaps they're forced to read Das Kapital for six-months and then are provided with a literary course on propaganda and the non-literal, multiple meanings of all texts. You have to feel some sympathy for the poor cadres in charge of writing the re-education curriculum.
P.S. It would be nice to hear what the Uniden workers themselves have to say about this but for some strange reason, their blog is inaccessible.
Some blogments on the strike that are accessible can be found at China Herald and RC Converstation. There are also some news articles as well as a plagiarized version of this post on another blog.
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