Word: taxies
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Another day, another strike. But this isn't France or India. It's China. On Nov. 27, yet another Chinese city was hit by a work stoppage by its taxi drivers, this time in Chaozhou, a city of some 2.5 million residents in the southern province of Guangdong. Repeating the pattern started when cabbies went on strike in the huge metropolis of Chongqing in central China on November 6, the mayor of Chaozhou sat down for talks with representatives of the drivers, who complained of competition from illegal cabs, gouging by the taxi companies from whom they rented their cars...
...rough estimate, this was the eighth time in four weeks that taxi drivers around the nation had slammed on their brakes, making the rolling strikes the longest sustained chain reaction of labor unrest in the history of the People's Republic. The strikes are emerging as a test case of a new policy of information control and management instituted by President Hu Jintao that shuns the authorities' traditional emphasis on suppressing bad news altogether and stresses instead using official media to attempt to control how events like strikes, protests and even natural disasters are reported in China. The complex methods...
...whole, the rolling taxi strikes have been remarkable for the restraint shown by the authorities, whose response to challenges from below can often be ham-fisted - and brutal. They have also drawn attention for the relatively unfettered coverage given to them in the state media - particularly the first strike in Chongqing when state media, such as the Xinhua News Agency, featured lengthy stories detailing how the local governor and central politburo member Bo Xilai led negotiations to resolve the dispute...
...continuing wave of taxi strikes underlines a danger that the more upfront coverage of controversial issues carries with it: the danger of copycat incidents in other parts of the country. With the police detaining or jailing leaders of some of the strikes, those involved are understandably reluctant to discuss their motivations. But many observers believe that there is little doubt the lengthy coverage of the strikes in the official media was seen as a form of legitimization by later strikers. "There have been taxi-driver strikes occasionally in the past a few years, but never so many in such...
...story die a natural death. Normally, "within days the story starts to blow over and there's reader fatigue with it so they move onto to the next story in the news cycle," Bandurski says. "It's very effective." But that method is trickier with an issue like the taxi strikes, which are the result of long-standing grievances - sometimes going back a decade - that have been left largely unaddressed. Unlike other protests, these strikes are not directed specifically against the communist party, which may also explain why the official media has been given freer reins. Still, now that...