full article http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/083100china-econ.html August 31, 200 Factory Closings in China Arouse Workers' Fury By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL TIANJIN, China, Aug. 29 -- The brick-walled Meite Packaging factory compound is nearly deserted now, its managers and machines hastily transferred in the last couple of days to a special development zone 30 miles outside this industrial city. Although the closing had long been planned, the sudden departure was prompted by an unusual event here, Last week, desperate Chinese workers expecting layoffs seized six foreign managers from Meite's American parent company and held them hostage in the factory for 40 hours. In the space of a decade, the Meite plant was transformed from a state-owned company making pipes to a beverage packaging firm jointly owned by the Chinese and an American corporation -- and, just recently, to a factory wholly owned by the foreign partner, the Ball Corporation of Broomfield, Colo. And so this sweltering summer, middle-aged workers who not so many years ago were promised cradle-to-grave security by the state factory found their livelihoods suddenly threatened by a capitalist corporate restructuring and felt they had no where to turn. "Every day since the beginning of August they were there at the gate, protesting and trying to block deliveries and people from going in," said Liu Qiuling, a retiree who lives next to the factory and knows many who worked there. "But the managers didn't meet with them. I think that's why the workers were so mad." Taking foreign businessmen hostage is rare in China, despite the thousands of often fractious business partnerships between Chinese and foreign companies. But the workers' frustrations that touched off the incident are commonplace, leading to hundreds if not thousands of protests in recent years. Under government orders to become economically self-sufficient, many formerly state-owned factories have tried to transform themselves, often with the help of foreign partners. The sink-or-swim strategy promoted by Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who oversees economic policy, has no doubt rescued thousands of companies from bankruptcy and prepared them to compete in the global market. It has also often enriched many former state factory officials, who are often offered lucrative positions in the revamped business. But it has been painful and confusing for China's tens of millions of workers, echoing similar privatization efforts in the former Soviet bloc. The workers are unfamiliar with the intricacies of buyouts and severance packages, generally lack effective labor unions and have little outlet for their complaints against new, often absentee, bosses. "Workers' rights are not protected much when this happens," said Anita Chan, a labor expert at Australian National University. "These are people who worked for the state and thought they would work and then retire and enjoy certain benefits: health care, pensions, things like that. "But then one day it's just finished. And they are 40 and have many decades of life ahead of them. What will they live on?"
