Beijing clamps down on labor unrest

Factory workers, carrying a portrait of the late chairman, Mao Zedong, lead a march in protest for the fourth straight day in the northeastern Chinese city of Liaoyang

(CNN) -- The Chinese leadership is targeting underground labor organizations, which are thought to be behind growing instances of industrial unrest over the last month.

The para-military People's Armed Police (PAP) has been given orders to break up protests soon as they crop up.

A source close to security departments in Beijing said the central leadership had been alarmed by a rash of labor unrests that stretched from the western provinces of Ningxia and Sichuan to the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Heilongjiang.

"Underground labor organizations have been much more active than before and they have been able to mobilize workers from different factories in the same city," the source said.

"The police and PAP have been told to detain leaders of unauthorized labor unions soon as unrests break out."

The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Democratic Movement in China said at least four organizers of demonstrations in the city of Liaoyang, Liaoning had been nabbed.

Tougher tactics

The number of demonstrators in the medium-sized city decreased from a few tens of thousands earlier this week to just several hundred on Wednesday after the PAP started to use force to disperse workers gathered at the site of the municipal government.

However, the size of protests in the oil city of Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, which has a well-structured unofficial trade union, has continued to increase.

Latest reports from the northeastern province said employees from several factories had joined laid-off oil workers in staging demonstrations outside government offices in Daqing.

Diplomatic analysts in Beijing said the authorities had ordered tougher tactics for fear the unrest may spread to even more provinces.

Moreover, demonstrators in a few cities have reportedly threatened violent action.

"In a show-down with authorities in the city of Yinchuan in Ningxia Province, protestors threatened to blow up a factory unless the authorities agreed to settle unpaid salaries," a diplomatic analyst said.

"The widespread use of the PAP signals that tactics of pacification and reconciliation have been put aside at least for the time being."

Strong-armed tactics

Since large-scale labor unrest erupted in the late 1990s, relatively liberal cadres such as Politburo Standing Committee member Li Ruihuan have advocated the conciliatory approach of trying to reach a compromise with demonstrators.

However, at the just-finished National People's Congress, President Jiang Zemin, who is also commander in chief of the army and the PAP, underscored the need for the uniformed forces to help maintaining domestic order.

In the past month, both the army and the PAP have been given additional responsibilities in fighting terrorism and other challenges to law and order.

Hong Kong-based activist Han Dongfang, who monitors the labor movement in China, warned that the use of strong-armed tactics against workers could be counter-productive.

"Some of the demonstrators in Liaoyang are in their 50s and 60s," he said.

"Yet if the authorities were to try to disperse them by force, they might go and lay themselves on the railway tracks."