A Training Session

I left that training session disturbed — and that feeling still hasn’t left me. It was organised by the labour union of my workplace. Yes, a Chinese labour union: the entity that occupies the ecological niche of genuine unions to make sure real ones never appear. But what unsettled me most was the woman they brought in to lecture us.

Her bio was an immediate red flag — more a checklist of ideological loyalty than any academic credential. Here it is, translated from Chinese:

XXX is a lecturer at the Provincial Institute of Labor Relations. She holds a master’s degree in management from Southeast University, and is a lecturer in the Youth Lecturer Group of the Communist Youth League Provincial Committee. Her main research areas include the history of the Chinese workers’ movement, safeguarding political security in the labor field, reform of the industrial workers’ team construction, and the important thoughts of General Secretary Xi Jinping on youth work. She is currently involved in a youth project funded by the National Social Science Fund. Her paper titled “Research on the Influencing Factors of the Effectiveness of the Reform of the Construction of the Industrial Workers’ Team in State-owned Enterprises” won the first prize for outstanding papers at the 2022 Annual Conference of the National Trade Union Studies Association. The courses she teaches were recognized as “Gold Medal Courses” in the provincial online education and training for trade union cadres in both 2022 and 2023.

My scepticism deepened. Whose political security was she safeguarding? Against what? If someone claims a person’s thought is “important” simply because of who said it, isn’t that just inventing reasons to justify a predetermined conclusion?

In her subsequent talk, she listed the five key missions of Chinese unions, and every line read like a parody — except it wasn’t.

• Resolutely prevent hostile forces from intervention, incitement, infiltration, and sabotage in so-called names such as “rights protection”;
• Resolutely prevent the emergence of so-called “independent unions” and “civil unions”;
• Resolutely safeguard the unity and solidarity of the workforce and [established] union organisations;
• Resolutely maintain harmony and stability in enterprises and society;
• Resolutely defend the socialist system led by the Communist Party of China.

This is not a mission statement — it’s a containment strategy. There was nothing about collective bargaining, fair wages, or protection from exploitation. Only an obsession with “resolutely” defending an illusory harmony from imagined threats. Every line was a blunt insult to the very institution she claimed expertise in.

Then came her media advice: never speak to foreign journalists about union-related matters. According to her, these journalists have “ill intentions” and will cherry-pick your words to fit their narrative and manipulate public opinions. This was unintentionally satirical. Just days earlier, a British friend of mine — a researcher in the environmental field — told me about his experience with CGTN, China’s state media. After a whole morning of thoughtful conversation on cross-border collaboration, CGTN edited out everything except the part in which he said he loved China very much.

She also warned against “foreign hostile forces”. One group she singled out was China Labour Bulletin (CLB). According to her, CBL pretends to be independent in order to smear China. What she concealed was that CLB was founded by a Chinese national and based in Hong Kong, and did what a real union does: documenting abuse, empowering workers, tracking strikes, and exposing exploitation. Since when has Beijing granted independence to that territory? Or is it that anything not state-sanctioned is, by default, “foreign”? More ironically, just weeks before her talk, CLB quietly dissolved itself, citing “financial difficulties” amidst speculations that it fell under the shadow of the National Security Law. This was supposedly her field of expertise, yet she seemed entirely unaware of that.

Beyond these absurdities and many others in her talk, what agitated me most was the composure that she radiated. She delivered everything — every restriction, every distortion —with total calm and comfort. I sensed no dishonesty, no hesitation, only the confidence of someone who was firmly convinced of what she said. I could picture her going home after the talk, or many other similar ones in the future, proud of her “gold medal courses”, satisfied that she had contributed something meaningful, and completely untroubled by the moral vacancy at all.

Equally unsettling was the audience: nodding along with polite appreciation.

Perhaps this woman — and many in that room — are exactly the kind of people that many Chinese resent with their teeth gritted at the moment with the economic slowdown. These people have feasted on the dividends of the era (吃尽了时代的红利) by complying with institutionalised inequality and injustice. While reaping the benefits at the cost of others, they remain oblivious — or choose to remain oblivious — to the unfairness at the core of it all. And some, like this woman, go one step further to actively defend the system that makes it possible.

It might be too noble to speak up against inequality and injustice, but to shut up and stop adding insult to injury is the least one can do to save their dignity. This irony reminds me of a podcast episode that I listened to quite recently: is China still Marxist?