In the Water

MPF: What Are You Funding?

While at work today, I got the annual return form for my Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) scheme. For those who don't know, all Hong Kongers who are legally employed have to pay a percentage of their income each month into the MPF, an obligatory pension fund that can be cashed in once you reach retirement age or leave Hong Kong. The employers also have to pay into the scheme, and a larger amount at that. Sounds good so far. But it is not any remotely accountable or transparent unit that operates the MPF system... instead, our money goes into large, private banking institutions, which then keep the money as their own short/medium-term capital, or invest the money as they see fit.

Again, the 'M' means that this is a MANDATORY scheme which we have to pay into by law. Sure, we get some say as to where our money goes, into the 'risky' or 'not-so-risky' funds. But as to where specifically it is actually invested... well, we lose sight of our hard-earned cash by that point. So essentially, all legally employed people are required by law to subsidize banks and corporations with a percentage of their income every month.

To take an example of perhaps the worst case scenario, a Hong Kong worker could choose, for example, to put a percentage of his MPF contribution into the 'Global Equity Fund'. Despite the increased risk of loss, this fund promises higher returns than the default 'Capital Preservation Fund', and the worker can be encouraged by the prospect of making a tidy profit to add to his retirement nest egg. It's certainly an enticing idea, especially when one considers the horrible situation that elderly people who have to live off government welfare in HK are faced with.

Well, where the hell does this money go? Turns out I was just informed of the top ten investments under the Global Equity Fund by my employers' MPF managers, the Bank of China:

1). Cash & Deposit
2). General Electric Co
3). Exxon Mobil Corporation
4). Citigroup Inc
5). Bank of America Corporation
6). Microsoft Corporation
7). BP Plc
8). Pfizer Inc.
9). Int'l Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
10). Intel Corporation

So, with one's hard earned money, they would be subsidizing one of the world' s largest weapons makers (General Electric), two of the largest and dirtiest oil companies in the world (Exxon Mobil and BP), the kingpin of Big Pharmaceuticals (Pfizer), two of the largest and most nefarious banks in the world (Bank of America and Citigroup, of which the latter has an ongoing campaign against it and was called the "world's most destructive bank" in 2000) and THREE US high-tech industry corporations (IBM, Intel, and Microsoft) which are the prime beneficiaries of that country's military-industrial complex.

Other recepients of our money could include the US and Japanese reserve banks (so we can underwrite the US/Japanese economies and their deficits, presumably) ; land-ownership cartels such as Cheung Kong, Sun Hung Kai, and Swire Properties (so we can contribute to their almost total control over the city); private banking institutions such as Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and HSBC...

To me it seems patently illogical to operate a pension scheme that invests in the institutions of corporate capitalism and militarism. The logic of the former is to save for the future, while the ideology of the latter is to never think beyond the notion of short term gains, thus destroying any chance we have of a future. Moreover, forcing working citizens to contribute to this destruction by law seems to me the height of immorality.

According to my return, I made HK$0.80 profit off this year's MPF scheme. I shudder to think where even such a paltry sum came from. So, an in-depth investigation into how our money is used would be vital, and if anyone knows of existing studies, I'd be grateful if you let me know! Also, if there are 'alternative' MPF schemes that I could change to tomorrow, I'd also love to hear about them.

Meanwhile, the question we should be asking ourselves, our bosses, our co-workers, friends, families, and any and all concerned is: what the hell are we funding? And why?

Dial-a-bureaucrat... For all your profit-making needs

So it seems that the British automaker Rover is going under, probably to be bought out in the near future...  this in itself isn't that interesting for me, but you might have heard that before the latest announcement, Rover was moving towards a joint venture with a Shanghai based company to produce cars in China: a deal that was being personally brokered by the British government!

A few months ago I reposted a report from the South China Morning Post about British ministers moonlighting as factory inspectors at a facility in Chongqing that produced uniforms for the British military. In that case the workers apparently weren't 'working hard enough' and "putting British troops at risk", requiring a delegation of government representatives to visit and see what those pesky workers were up to.

Now Tony B.Liar and his crew are personally negotiating deals and offering bailout packages for British corporations who wish to have a jaunt in that distant Orient where the labour is cheap and the factories are many? Oh you've never had a friend like me, said the state machinery to the corporate behemoth.

In another development along these themes, a landmark ruling in Europe has been hailed as a victory against 'biopiracy'-- loosely defined as the plunder-by-patent of natural resources and traditional knowledge, particularly from the 'third world', by multinational corporations seeking to "own" and control them.

What's happened is that the European Patent Office (EPO) has revoked the patent that the US based WR Grace corporation held over neem, a tree that grows in parts of South Asia which has been used for medicinal purposes for centuries. A member of the Indian delegation which challenged the patent summed up the verdict's significance...

“Patenting is one of the ways through which traditional users can be threatened. But now such patents will no longer be a threat to traditional users…Denying the patent means upholding the value of the traditional for millions of [people] not only in India but throughout the South. The free tree will stay free,”

The decision is definitely a positive one, if it can be enforced and extended to other such patents. But also interesting is the entity which had sought out the original patent from the EPO back in 1995 along with WR Grace- none other than the US Department of Agriculture! Indeed, Vandana Shiva has an interesting article on how the entire government patent system in the US facilitates corporate biopiracy.

So, brokering deals, inspecting factories, soliciting patents in the international arena to support corporate ownership over public goods, providing a legal structure to protect this ownership with force... next time a "free-market libertarian" tells you that bureaucracy gets in the way of capitalism and that the owners of production and would rather the state wasn't there, tell them they're full of crap! A painfully obvious point to make here in China, of course... but oh well.

Foshan factory strike

So it seems the city of Foshan, which I think I briefly mentioned in relation to my travels in Guangdong last month, was the scene of a 5,000-strong strike by factory workers a few days ago.  The strike is reportedly over an occupational health and safety issue, involving the contracting of silicosis by workers in a Hong Kong-owned jewelery factory, and the subsequent tampering of medical files by the employer...

There are apparently few reports on this in English, even on the usual blogs like Asian Labour News... so I'm going to reprint the following post from that maoist academic-y site China Study Group...

The post has two or three links to reports in Chinese on this story, so if you can read them, they're there...

Jewelry Factory Workers Strike in Guangdong

5,000 workers in a Hong Kong jewelry factory in Foshan City of Guangdong Province struck for 3 days (3/15-3/17) after they began to suspect that their employer had falsified medical exam results showing that some workers had contracted silicosis.

Earlier this year, 10 workers with several years of experience at the plant, suspecting that their employers were withholding medical exam results, went to a provincial hospital specializing in occupational diseases for a second opinion. 2 of the 10 were diagnosed with silicosis, despite having been given a clean bill of health in the plant’s medical exams. These findings let 212 more workers to get second opinions, and 12 further cases were found.

Upon hearing the news, the plant’s 5,000 workers refused to return to work and surrounded the factory. The owners were rumored to have fled to Guangzhou. The work stoppage attracted the attention of the city’s Health and Labor Bureaus, and large-scale medical examinations were organized. A total of 31 workers were diagnosed with silicosis by 3/19.

The workers, who average work on the average 9 hours a day with one day off every two months, claim frequent exposure to both glass and plastic particles given off during the jewelry manufacturing process.

(still waiting for English reports, please email us if you know of any)

• 疑染塵肺症 佛山港資廠爆發5000人罷工 –  苦勞網 3/19
• 首饰工疑染尘肺病入院 – 搜狐 3/19
• 广东首饰厂职工疑染尘肺病 5000工人与厂方对峙 – 今日扬州 3/19

Nigeria

There hasn't been too much in the news about the capture on Sunday of two oil platforms in Nigeria by hundreds of area-residents.  With no weapons but their collective determination, it seems, the protesting residents managed to shut down production in the Chevron-Texaco and Royal Dutch Shell facilities to the tune of 120,000 barrels a day.

According to this report, the company was finally forced into talks on Tuesday regarding the effects of the oil industry on communities in the area.

Hundreds of protesters ended their three-day siege of oil platforms in the oil-rich Niger Delta on Tuesday, paddling away in canoes and boats after Royal Dutch-Shell Cos. and ChevronTexaco Corp. agreed to talks... Villagers were protesting what they said was a lack of local benefits from more than four decades of oil drilling around their impoverished community, Kula... Oil operations in the restive Niger Delta are frequently disrupted by protests -- some violent -- on the part of aggrieved, impoverished communities that feel cheated out of the oil wealth pumped from their land.

This on platforms owned by two of the world's most powerful corporations, strategically located in Africa's biggest oil exporter, where overt and brutal state violence has often been used against those resisting the activities of multinationals and the effects of corporate globalization  (US radio journalists Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill did quite an extensive piece on this during their trip to Nigeria in the late 1990s... the transcript is available here).

We have yet to see where the talks will go, but from what I've read the villagers' story so far is both inspiring and humbling.

Of course, China's interest in African oil (as well as oil in other parts of the world) has recently jumped, particularly with the US's attempt to secure control over the world's largest reserves in West Asia (or 'Middle East'). I'll try and locate a better source... for the moment there's a very basic but interesting article on such matters here.

Another reason, it seems, for us to take seriously the effects of multinationals and oil production on the communities in places like Nigeria, and to try and voice the demands of these communities here.

Pictures from Dec 3 demo

I should have posted this earlier, but things have been a little hectic lately. Fortunately, they've been hectic in a good way, with lots of meetings with lots of good people about starting up some campaigns and creative actions over this year to build up to the WTO meetings in HK (and beyond, of course). A more considered post will come soon.

Anyway, as I mentioned to Ray in the comments section, we held a very hastily organized demo on Dec 3 in front of the Dow Chemical company offices. I'd never been to these offices, but they turned out to be a major regional hub for Dow's activities.  Makes one wonder how many other killer companies operate in near-anoymity on the top floors of HK giant skyscrapers.

Dow also has a production facility in the Tsing Yi area, and has several facilities in mainland China, and participants in the demo brought up links between HK, China and Bhopal. Some linked it to the issue of democracy and accountability, citing Bhopal as a tragic example of what can happen when powerful people and companies can act with impunity, while others brought up the possibility of a Bhopal-type disaster happening in China through the reckless and unrestrained activities of corporations operating there.

There weren't so many people participating, but we still managed to get into the corridors of the office tower and make a lot of noise. It was also good of legislator Leung Kwok-hung to show up and support the demo...

This action was basically to show solidarity with the Global Day of Action Against Corporate crime called by the International Committee for Justice in Bhopal and Bhopal victims groups.  But for us in HK, where many killer corporates have their bases, a more sustained, strategic, and direct campaign against the likes of Dow is in order. Let's see what we can do.

Incidentally, to your left is a picture of the Dow representative who came out to meet us holding a sign saying 'Justice for Bhopal Victims'. Hmmm.

Bhopal posters

 

Thursday- Where will you be?

Many in Hong Kong have been thinking a lot about the idea of  'development' lately, perhaps-- hopefully-- questioning the word's supposedly inherent links to the glass and metal monoliths in the shadows of which we make our livings.

Specifically, the questions seem to be- who defines what the hell 'development' means? Who decides what is needed, what is built, and for whom? More fundamentally, whose city is this?

Lung Ying-tai recently and famously posed these questions through an emotive piece in the HK newspaper Apple Daily (her piece wonderfully translated here by ESWN).

"Why does the government have the right to hand them [historical artifacts of Hong Kong] over to real estate developers to 'handle'?" Lung asked. "Would you auction off your grandmother's handwritten diary?"

Thursday-Friday this week will be the 20th anniversary of one of the worst corporate crimes in recent history. On Dec 2-3 1984, thousands of people were killed when the Union Carbide chemical fertilizer plant, owned by today's Dow Chemical and built inside the city of Bhopal, leaked 27 tons of methyl-isocyanate into the air due to faulty construction. negligence, and cutbacks. Between Dec 2-3 1984 and Dec 2-3 2004, thousands of other people have suffered the lingering effects of contamination: the premature deaths, the birth abnormalities, cancers, brain damage, the mental illnesses, and the "menstrual chaos."

As Lung would perhaps pose the question- what is the relationship between these seemingly unrelated points, cities, events?

Well, I would say that tragedies like Bhopal are perhaps the most extreme, most tragic, most horrifying, yet inevitable result of the rule of what Lung called "Central District values":

"[These values are] the Hong Kong the world sees, and this is what Hong Kong is happy to present: the impressive buildings, the elegance of the stores, the fluency in English language, and the middle-class people walking quickly between buildings in Central District in their sparkling white collars. That is to say, the Central District represents Hong Kong. The Central District values monopolized and represented the values of Hong Kong: within the operational logic of capitalism, people pursue individual wealth and emphasize commercial competitiveness, and they use "economics", "wealth", "efficiency", "development", and "globalization" as the standards of social progress."

It is a rule and a dominant logic where, as Lung writes, ordinary people have no control. Not only do they not matter, but they do not matter to the extent that they do not exist, nor ever existed, and live out their lives as utterly disposable. It is a rule where all that does exist about us-- our only history, our only present, our only future-- is a function of our value as tools in the process of profit-making for political and economic elites. It is a rule where 'freedom' does not mean control over our lives, but an appropriate obedience to the control of the powerful.

"[but] they won't see the sad-looking and depressed faces of the unemployed workers of the Shamshuipo streets, nor those new immigrants who live in Kwun Tong and Yuen Long and who have never even been to the Central District. Outsiders wait on the Avenue of the Stars for the amazing fireworks show to commence but they do not know that 1,450,000 of the seven million people in Hong Kong live below the poverty line, with many single senior citizens living in cages like chickens and ducks. They cannot imagine that this, Asia's World City, ranks number five in the world in terms of economic inequality alongside Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Uruguay."

It is the overriding enforcement of these values that I would call state-corporate rule.

And it is, indeed, a rule which we have exemplified in Hong Kong, with our physical and political environments governed by a ruling class of unrepresentative, unaccountable bureaucrats, and the overriding economic decisions controlled by corporate giants with names like Hutchison, Cheung Kong, and Sun Hung Kai, organisms that will live for decades longer than you and I could ever dream.

In Bhopal, the slum dwellers died, poor and breathless in the night, and were not and are not seen as human. To save US$40 a day in freon costs, Dow-Carbide took their lives in the thousands, those thousands of people who had no idea of what hit them, let alone any say in matters relating to their city. "$500 is plenty good for an Indian", a Dow-Carbide representative concluded in 2002, referring to the meagre compensation handed out to each of the Bhopal victims.

In our Hong Kong, too, some humans rule and others are invisible. The demolitions continue, the harbor 'reclamations' continue, West Kowloon is commercialized in the name of culture, Mong Kok is smashed for yet another mega-shopping mall, the land and the people are erased until neither land nor people matter, and until... until what, then?

Will our continuing histories continue to be paved over, only to be replaced by this?

Or this?

The International Committee for Justice in Bhopal has not only called the 20th anniversary a day to mourn the victims of that tragedy and support their continuing struggle for justice, but a Global Day of Action against Corporate Crime, wherever we may be.

Because as different as these places, these cities, these events seem, they are inevitably linked...

And what we all need is another kind of reclamation.

A reclamation of that control over the political and economic decisions that affect our lives-- that is, control over the future and its 'development'-- which is at the very core of democracy.

That is why we  should remember this Thursday-Friday as a tragedy of the past, but also as a sign of the dangers in our present, and as a future we must fight like hell to prevent.

Because as different and distant ourselves and our struggles might seem sometimes, we have days like this to stop to think about our links to each other, our many, yet common fights for justice, for democracy, and to reclaim control of our lives and our futures.

"We all live in Bhopal."

Big Pictures in the Year 512

Justin Podur, aside from being a great writer and largely responsible for ZNet's Latin America- & South Asia Watch, also maintains a great blog called The Killing Train (which you should definitely check out regularly). Justin recently wrote a post on the theme of 'big picture' analysis:

'Big-picture' analysis is always a dicey proposition especially when it seems that there are always emergencies to try and respond to. Responding to the raiding of yet another mosque, shooting and killing 4 people at prayer, with analysis, seems inappropriate. Especially when, by the time you hear about the mosque massacre, there are already bombings and attacks in response, and then more violence in response to the response...

This certainly is the case... but of course, defining emergencies and responding to them should not be the only task of writers and movements. Indeed, this would invoke the strange logic of the corporate media. As the wonderful journalist and writer P. Sainath commented on the matter of poverty in his book Everybody Loves a Good Drought:

"...[A]t the best of times, the press has viewed drought and scarcity as events. And the belief that only events make news, not processes, distorts understanding."

When you consider what the public actually sees of elites and ruling classes and their programs, most of it is in the form of events, offers, and spectacles... laced, of course, with the ideologically loaded terms and emotive rhetoric of political spin doctors, advertisers, and other frontmen.

However, corporate and military elites tend to be much more blunt when talking to each other- which is why reading the business media and corporate press releases is often a good way to keep in touch with what is really going on. These too tend to contain 'events', but between the lines of such reporting the 'processes' are fairly clear.

So, where political frontmen use words like "freedom", "democracy", and "self-rule", we can rely on someone like the US Navy's Chief of Operations to provide us with a more accurate picture regarding foreign policy, (if we catch him at the right event):

"Principal speaker, U.S. Navy Adm. Vern Clark, chief of Naval Operations said the ship 'will be ready to take American sovereignty to the far corners of the earth'..."

The quote comes via a press release from the tax-funded weapons-making giant Northrop-Grumman, marking the christening of a new ship.

Vern's comments are unusually blunt. But this document is like many examples of other business media reporting, and particularly press releases from the 'defence industry': with every description of an event, speech, contract, or merger, they provide us with clear snapshots of the elite interests and state-corporate institutions that fuel permanent war.

So clear, in fact, that one wonders how ideologically programmed we must be to not see the big picture in each event we are handed...

Stating the Obvious

Brazil became the first "giant country" to recognise China as a "market economy", the Asia Times reported this week (as of June 2004, Malaysia, Singapore, and New Zealand were the only countries that gave China this label).

Talk about calling a spade a spade. The same week saw the People's Daily report about continuing privatization/closure of state-owned enterprises, ever increasing levels of foreign direct investment, and a rise in oil consumption to fuel this "economic development". China has a largely market-based health system, as well as other features of capitalist economies, such as widening income gaps.

But it wasn’t just Lula’s stating the obvious that interested me, the apparent logic he used is worth highlighting. Lula reportedly told his advisers that if countries like the US and European nations could be considered market economies despite the massive state involvement they have in their economies (especially in terms of handouts to corporations), then China deserved the label as well.

Interesting. So the first question that came to my mind was: why the hell, then, do the WTO and elites in Washington and Europe, not recognize China as a "market economy"?

The main reasons I can think of are ideological. Free-market dogma in the West would hold that China cannot be a market economy because it is ruled by an autocratic state. The confused dichotomy of 'communism/socialism' (economic visions) vs. 'democracy/freedom' (political vision) served important ideological functions for Western elites in the 20th century, in terms of social control and getting popular support for elite programs, by apparently merging any challenge of capitalism and the 'free market' to a political doctrine of totalitarianism.

We can still see the link between ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’ today, as US forces battle totalitarian demons such as "dictators" and "Islamic fascism" and export their 'freedom’—a central component is so-called 'free trade'-- around the world. In Kosovo and Iraq, to name but two cases, 'democracy' and 'liberation' by US elites has explicitly involved the subjection of national economies to "privatization" (i.e. corporate control).

If big, bad China is officially accepted as a capitalist power, how can this same economic be then sold' to the home audience and the world as going hand in hand with 'freedom' and 'democracy'...?

The second question that came to my mind was this. The Asia Times piece notes China's "desire to gain the same recognition from other countries." An earlier article from the same newspaper notes that the "big prizes" would be recognition from the US and the EU.

But aside from the substantial monetary benefits, why the hell are Chinese elites so happy about being recognized as a “market economy”, when the symbols and rhetoric of communism-- or at least the Chinese Communist Party-- continue to serve contemporary notions of nationalism, social control, and support for the State?

(As Roland Lew recently wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique, "it is nationalism, rather than its ideological cloak of communism, that explains the course of the CCP")

Funnily enough, they'e probably following a similar rationale: an ideology that merges ‘communism’ and the autocratic state. The notions of 'capitalism' (a dirty word) and 'the market' (a path to economic development for the motherland) tend to be differentiated in China's elite-speak. You will never read about the onset of capitalism in the Chinese press, but may find plenty about the wonders of a “market economy”. A 'controlled market', under the guidance of the Communist Party, is presented in official propaganda as the ‘best way forward’ for the nation.

Being accepted as a "market economy", then, would have huge benefits for elite groups without necessarily compromising their power or legitimacy as a ruling class. No wonder they're happy.

So Lula's words, however deliberately, indicate the similarities in the current Western and Chinese economic systems, though they would have their ideological reasons for claiming otherwise.

He points out what the dogma of the 'free market' so often pushed by Washington and the WTO actually means: that the market's rule over everything is fine for 'them', but 'we' know that without massive state involvement in areas such as policing and corporate welfare, a market would be an utterly insane idea to which we would never subject ourselves.

And this idea of corporations and market-allocation alongside an appropriately-large state seems to be the currently preferred option for elites in China as well.

Of course, no two models will be exactly the same. But Lula, at least, has officially recognized that they share more features in common than any of their governments would care to admit.

That Other Constituency

A lot has been made about the "grassroots conservative" movement in the US that was the key to George W. Bush's recent election victory. Certainly the mobilization of Christian fundamentalists, and rallying around homophobia and misogyny created a popular base of support for the Bush and the gang, and created a very dangerous trend that will be difficult for US activists and progressives to reverse.

Lest we forget, however, Southern baptist preachers and their followers weren't the only ones cheering on November 3. Corporate elites were more than happy to find themselves with four more years of "certainty".

Weapons makers, in particular, saw their stocks surge with news of Bush's re-election.  Expressing "relief" at the outcome, there was a feeling of "confidence that defense companies will get more business from a second-term Bush administration than they would have under John Kerry," according to the AP.

Indeed, the Bush administration's invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, heightened state repression inside the US,  and the pursuit of 'Son of Star Wars' missile program have led to arms manufacturers experiencing phenomenal growth in their profit margins.

And it seems that Washington has become a sort of boomtown, with arms merchants everywhere clamoring for a piece of the world's largest weapons market... all subsidized for by US taxpayers, of course.  (The state-supported European Aeronautics, Defense & Space (EADS) is one of the companies vying for a bit of corporate welfare, putting a somewhat different perspective on the so-called "Europe-US split over Iraq").

It's been a "great last five years," Jim Albaugh of Boeing summarized.

Most people would disagree. The "socialized cost" of a booming arms industry --war--  is a fairly  heavy burden for ordinary people in the world to bear. The latest count of Iraqi people killed has been put at 100,000, with the authors claiming that this is still a "conservative" estimate. We don't have as reliable a figure for Afghanistan, but estimates of deaths from aerial bombardment alone still run in the thousands. Murders and attacks on the opposition continue in Haiti. We are also faced with a new era of two-minute-warnings and hair-trigger-alerts, with the US not only encouraging international proliferation through its militarism, but actively seeking to develop the "next generation" of nuclear weapons.

Mass murder, mass repression, occupation, and the ever-imminent annihilation of the planet... it's been a golden age for business.

Towards the end of the piece, though, Albaugh nonetheless predicted that there are lean years ahead. A "moderation in defense spending" was apparently expected by the weapons industry regardless of who got into the White House.

So, take heart. At least the industry thinks there'll be a bit less than USD399.1 billion-- more than the defense budgets of Russia, China, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Italy, India, South Korea, Brazil, Taiwan, Israel, Spain, Australia, Canada, Holland, Turkey, Mexico, and Kuwait COMBINED-- spent on war in the coming year.

Not to be a doomsayer, but "four more years" is starting to sound like an overestimation.

War is peace.

(P.S. Yes,  Democrats and liberals, Albaugh said FIVE years. Apparently Clinton's "military humanism" was just as well appreciated by the arms industry as Bush's "war on terror.")