Freedom of Association: China Country Study

Summary and History

For Summary and History, see Country Study of China in Section 10, "Freedom of Expression."

Freedom of Association

For most of Chinese imperial history, free association was not practiced as it is generally recognized in Western societies.

Chinese guilds and independent trade unions emerged in the 19th century. As often happened also in Europe, these organizations over time became politicized, tied to emerging parties, as well as divided. In the long political struggle after the establishment of the Republic of China, there was ongoing division between Nationalist, Communist and non-party affiliated trade unions, some of which were associated with crime syndicates.

After establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, trade unions and civic or social organizations became official instruments of the Chinese Communist Party and state according to the Soviet model. As in the USSR, freedom of association was stipulated in the constitution but workers and citizens generally had no rights of association in practice. Efforts to organize independent student organizations and trade unions around the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 were crushed in a government crackdown.

Since 1989, workers and other citizens continue to try to organize independent initiatives and groups but the PRC’s police state works continually to suppress them. Spontaneous actions of workers acting collectively, however, have achieved some improvements in wages and working conditions by mounting pressure on official trade unions at the workplace level. A fuller description of these independent efforts is below.

The Rise of Chinese Guilds

In the 16th century, a new form of independent organization similar to guilds found in Europe began to form among merchants and skilled craftsmen. These became larger and more significant in the 19th century.

In the 16th century, a new form of independent organization similar to guilds found in Europe began to form among merchants and skilled craftsmen.

Tinsmiths were the first workers to organize a guild. Initially, thirteen workers founded the Cassia Society in 1800 and recruited others in tin shops. They opened the guild to coppersmiths as tin and copper shops merged. Membership increased with the demands of a growing shipbuilding industry. The specific number of members is unknown at different periods but in 1920, forty thousand members still belonged to the Cassia Society.

In addition to serving as recruiters of skilled labor, the Cassia Society, as well as other guilds created by merchants and bankers, were community centers for religious, social and cultural observances and they inspired creation of Chinese friendship societies and loan associations.

Trade Unions and their Politicization

In 1906, Ma Chaojun, an apprenticed mechanic from Hong Kong and a follower of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, was sent by him to Guangdong province to organize China's first modern labor union, the Guangdong Mechanics' Association. Strikes led by workers in Shanghai associated with Sun Yat-sen’s nationalists helped spur the 1911 revolution and establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. (For more on this period, see also History in the China Country Study in Freedom of Expression.)

In 1906, Ma Chaojun, an apprenticed mechanic from Hong Kong and a follower of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, was sent by him to Guangdong province to organize China's first modern labor union, the Guangdong Mechanics' Association.

When General Yuan Shikai assumed the presidency of the Republic in 1912, he banned strikes and restricted worker organization. After that point, when central administration collapsed, the labor movement split among nationalist, Communist and organized crime groups. 

Union organizing thrived in the early 1920s when Sun Yat Sen’s nationalist Kuomintang decided to work with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to re-unite the Republic in the First United Front. The Front benefited mainly the CCP’s General Labor Union. After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, the more authoritarian minded Chiang Kai-shek took over the Kuomintang. Following a coup attempt in April 1927, Chiang renounced the United Front and his nationalist government set out to defeat the CCP’s armed units.

To compete with the General Labor Union, the KMT established what were known as "yellow unions," that is unions serving mostly the interests of employers, not workers. These unions were also often tied to criminal gangs, which were central to China’s economy at the time.

With an invasion of China by Japan impending, Chang Kai Shek was forced to re-establish the United Front with the CCP in 1937. During and just after the war, the CCP took advantage of dire economic conditions to gain workers’ allegiance to its revolutionary platform. The civil war between the CCP and Nationalists resumed in 1946.

The Communist Takeover and State-Controlled Unionism

After the victory of the CCP’s National Revolutionary Army in 1949 and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese labor movement had no independence.

The CCP placed all unions under the framework of the state-run All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which functioned as an arm of the party-state. In 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, even the ACFTU was dissolved when Mao Zedong, China’s dominant communist leader, denounced unions as "counter-revolutionary." The ACFTU was reconstituted in 1978 after Deng Xiaoping assumed state and party leadership. Since then, the ACFTU has resumed its function as a party-state instrument for the control of the workforce.

After the victory of the CCP . . . and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese labor movement had no independence.

The ACFTU is organized according to the Soviet principle of "democratic centralism," under which lower-level branches must be guided by higher levels of leadership. The ACFTU itself is guided by the Communist Party. ACFTU representatives generally hold top positions in the CCP and also management positions in state-owned enterprises. Up until the latest party congress, the union's chairman has always been a member of the central Politburo.

The Trade Union Law of 1992 further defined trade unions as party-state interests, stating

The trade union must abide by and uphold the Constitution, . . . adhere to the people's democratic dictatorship, adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China [and] adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. . . .

In the 1990s and 2000s, the ACFTU tried to extend its reach to private and foreign companies and the migrant worker population. At the private and local level there were stirrings of independent activity but these are generally not sanctioned by ACFTU policy or practices (see also below).

Workers Protest Against Communist Control

Workers did not submit to the communist system easily. As in the USSR and Soviet Bloc countries, there were many cases of industrial unrest in which workers rebelled against the official union federation’s control. Protests were brutally suppressed. In response to ongoing labor unrest from 1949 to 1952, for example, the communist leader Mao Zedong ordered several ideological campaigns to arrest worker activists and put them in forced labor camps. 

Workers did not submit to the communist system easily. As in the USSR and Soviet Bloc countries, there were many cases of industrial unrest. . . .

In 1957, during the brief Hundred Flowers Movement, workers established Grievance Redress Societies to protest the use of trade unions as an instrument for fulfilling the first Five-Year Plan (1953–57). But when the Hundred Flowers campaign was ended for fear of growing discontent, the Grievance Redress Societies were repressed during the subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign. 

In 1978, a brief movement arose in which activists took advantage of a brief loosening of censorship to post large character banners with news and articles along the wall of a major Beijing street. After initially encouraging the postings as a way to foster Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations (see also Country Study in Freedom of Expression), officials took down the banners when activists called for human rights. 

In 1989, workers joined with students in the Tiananmen Square protests that spread throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of workers created branches of a new Worker Autonomous Federation (WAF).

The most famous Democracy Wall banner was by Wei Jinsheng, an electrician, who called for “The Fifth Modernization,” namely democracy and freedom. He argued that worker rights were indispensable to the other four economic modernizations. Wei was arrested with other activists but targeted for special treatment as a worker. He spent a total of eighteen years in prison before being forcibly exiled in 1997 (see Resources).

In 1989, workers joined with students in the Tiananmen Square protests that spread throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of workers created branches of a new Worker Autonomous Federation (WAF). When the regime cracked down on the Tiananmen Square protests, one key target was the Beijing WAF. Its leaders were arrested, along with thousands of workers who had joined. One of its leaders, Han Dongfang, was imprisoned and deliberately exposed to tuberculosis. As a result of international labor protests, he was released and exiled abroad, where he received medical treatment. 

The Beginning Era of Communist-Capitalist Fusion

The Four Modernizations begun in 1978 created a hybrid communist-capitalist economic system — without any Fifth Modernization to democratize the state or politics. This system propelled China on a path of unprecedented economic growth over more than 40 years, but with the same repressive conditions. Growth and China’s subsequent expansion of exports was the result mostly of the enormous transplant of manufacturing jobs from the US and EU foreign companies seeking cheaper labor costs. 

For the first two decades of economic growth, labor costs were kept very low by abundant labor, urbanization and the suppression of independent trade unions. But economic modernization ended China’s “iron rice bowl,” an idiom referring to previous policies that guaranteed life employment and welfare benefits from state enterprises. Shutdowns and reorganization of state-owned enterprises put 30 million workers out of work in the 1980s and ‘90s.

The conditions of work in China’s manufacturing sector, especially in private and foreign-owned companies, resembled some of the worst practices found in the early days of industrialization in the West.

The conditions of work in China’s manufacturing sector, especially in private and foreign-owned companies, resembled some of the worst practices found in the early days of industrialization in the West. The US labor federation, the AFL-CIO, chronicled these working conditions in annual petitions to the US Trade Representative. The AFL-CIO argued that the rampant violation of ILO standards constituted unfair trading practices by China according to US trade law. In a 2004 petition to the US Trade Representative (see reference in Resources), the AFL-CIO reported on working conditions for the tens of millions of migrants coming from rural areas: 

[Migrants] often step into a nightmare of twelve-hour to eighteen-hour work days with no day of rest, earning meager wages that may be withheld or unpaid altogether. . . . Workers are widely exposed to chemical toxins and hazardous machines, and suffer sickness, disfiguration, and death at the highest rates in world history.

The New Workers Movement

Despite the repression following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, workers still tried to organize independent unions, including the Free Labour Union of China, the League for Protection of the Rights of the Working People, and the Hired-Hand Workers' Federation in Shenzhen. None survived for long.

In Liaoyang City in 2002, several thousand workers marched under the banner of the Liaoyang City Unemployed and Bankrupt Workers Provisional Union. The workers demanded a government investigation into corruption that had bankrupted their factories. The union’s leaders were quickly arrested and sentenced to many years in prison each.

Starting around 2000, as the ever-increasing growth in manufacturing created a labor shortage, there was an upsurge of spontaneous worker protests and wildcat strikes sometimes involving tens of thousands of workers. The China Labour Bulletin, started by Han Dongfang, the exiled leader of the Workers’ Autonomous Federation, chronicled 90,000 mass actions and 30,000 wildcat strikes by workers over the period of 2000–10 (see Resources). 

In a rare sign of response to public pressure, state authorities amended the labor law in 2007-08 to increase the minimum wage and to broaden coverage of collective contracts represented by the ACFTU in place of individual employment contracts, the norm in foreign-owned enterprises. 

The spontaneous actions continued, many at foreign-owned firms. In 2010, workers launched wildcat strikes at several Japanese-run Honda parts factories that resulted in trend-setting agreements to improve wages. In 2012-13, news spread of mistreatment at subsidiary factories in China making Apple’s signature iPads. In early 2014, Walmart had to suspend its closings of factories and stores due to worker blockades. (In this case, even local ACFTU officials backed the worker protests.)

Any improvements for workers lagged well behind Western hourly rates and standards. As of 2023, the overall average per capita income was $12,541 as compared to the EU country average of around $40,000 and per capita income of $80-100,000 for the United States and high-income EU countries.

New Citizens’ Initiatives and NGOs

In the decade before Xi Jinping became China’s paramount leader in 2012-13, there was a period when Chinese authorities were more permissive in registering non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Economist reported that at the end of 2013, there were 500,000 registered NGOs. 

Most officially registered organizations are service organizations that supplement state services and operate under strict party-state supervision. Advocacy organizations or organizations seeking to deal with taboo subjects (such as the Tiananmen Square massacre) remained banned. Nevertheless, citizens registered other organizations advocating for policy changes at the local and even national level. New civic groups also defended migrant workers and educated citizens on various issues.

Citizens League leader Xu Zhiyong published an essay encouraging citizens to use their civil rights under China’s legal system, sparking what is called the New Citizens Movement. The authorities responded quickly to suppress it. 

One notable initiative, the Citizens’ League, was started in 2003 by Xu Zhiyong, Yu Jiang and Teng Biao “to promote constitutionalism and the rule of law in China.” That is, they advocated for greater adherence to basic rights guaranteed in China’s own constitution but not respected in practice. The Citizens’ League defended wrongfully convicted defendants and started an education campaign for migrant workers whose children were denied public education based on their inherited household registration (or residency) status. Xu even won election to a local council as an independent candidate.

In May 2012, just as Xi Jinping assumed full party-state control, Citizens League leader Xu Zhiyong published an essay encouraging citizens to use their civil rights under China’s legal system, sparking what is called the New Citizens Movement. The authorities responded quickly to suppress it. 

Xu was arrested that July for “disrupting public order” for organizing education rights and local anti-corruption campaigns. He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. In the last half of 2013, other leaders of the movement were imprisoned and sentenced to at least two years’ imprisonment. In 2016, another leading member from Hubei province was sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment for “inciting subversion of state power.”

Hong Kong: An Oasis No More

One small area where free trade unions continued to exist was in the Autonomous Region of Hong Kong, a former British colony returned to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. The British transferred authority on the basis of its Basic Law, which guaranteed respect for a number of freedoms for fifty years. Beijing called this arrangement "one country, two systems" (see also "Hong Kong: No Longer a Haven" in the China Country Study History section in Freedom of Expression).

When Hong Kong was still a colony, the union movement had been a political battlefield between nationalist and communist unions reflecting China’s prior history of politicized trade unions. In 1990, however, a new unified independent movement emerged: the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU). It had 61 union affiliates with 160,000 members total, including textile workers, dockworkers, teachers and government employees. 

[T]he Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) . . . did not shy from criticizing the PRC. Its leaders were strong pro-democracy spokesmen, independent from any state or party.

The HKCTU did not shy from criticizing the PRC. Its leaders were strong pro-democracy spokesmen, independent from any state or party. The founder and leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Teachers, the late Szeto Wah, also helped form the Democratic Party and the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China. The latter organized annual commemorations of the June 4 suppression of the Tiananmen Square. In 2014, on the 25th anniversary of the crackdown, 500,000 Hong Kong citizens participated in a candlelight vigil despite police threats of use of force.

In 2019, the central Chinese government imposed a new National Security Law that had been deadlocked in Hong Kong’s own Legislative Council. The law has effectively been used to quash a mass demonstration movement in favor of greater democracy in Hong Kong. The National Security Law has also been used to suppress free media, imprison opposition politicians, and repress the free trade union movement. 

The HKCTU’s leader, Lee Cheuk-yan, was imprisoned for participation in the 2019-20 protests and its general secretary went into exile. Affiliates eventually dissolved the HKCTU in 2021. Several of the constituent unions continue to exist, but the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, akin to the ACFTU, is now dominant.

Current Issues

For Current Issues, including in Hong Kong, see China Country Study in Freedom of Expression."