Solidarity against the World Bank/IMF
On 15-26 September, 180 finance ministers and 2,000 journalists will converge on Hong Kong for an World Bank/IMF meeting. The Hong Kong Solidarity against the World Bank/IMF coalition will organise its own, parallel activities. Gerard Greenfield* The campaign is particularly important because the World Bank will release two new reports during the Hong Kong meeting. The first report, China 2020, will be released on September 16th. This report celebrates the success of China's market reforms while demanding even more deregulation and privatisation over the next two decades. The widespread privatisation of state- owned enterprises in China in 1997 alone will see 50 million workers laid off. At the same time, the social security system is being commercialised and privatised, and migration from Villages to the cities is being encouraged as the solution to growing unemployment! There are already 100 million floating migrant workers looking for work!
These neo-liberal policies are underpinned by the fact that China is now the World Bank's biggest debtor. Many of the reforms being imposed on workers this year (including privatisation, the dismantling of the social security system, and the end of job security conform to the specific demands made by the World Bank in its report on China last year. The WB/IMF has found a real partner in the Chinese government in their campaign to generalise neo-liberal attacks on the working class.
A second report will deal with poverty in East Asia. While admitting that poverty is increasing in East Asia, the World Bank argues that effective poverty alleviation requires even greater privatisation of social welfare. The bank denies any contribution of labour market deregulation and unemployment to this new poverty.
The campaign organised by Solidarity against the World Bank/IMF will also focus on Hong Kong. In the World Bank's celebration of the "East Asian miracles" , the Bank has argued that structural adjustment in the former British colony was a painless experience for workers. It is claimed that all of the workers who lost jobs under the mass plant closures in the 1980s easily found jobs in the service sector!
The campaign will highlight the real crisis faced by unemployed workers in Hong Organisers welcome letters of solidarity, which will be publicised as part of the campaign. Please send messages to: Fax: 852 2454 6094 (Attention Au Loong Yu) or <[email protected]> *Gerard Greenfield works at the Asia Monitor Resource Center in Hong Kong
Kong, and the lack of income and job security in the casualised service sector. This
Will link up with ongoing local protests against the "freezing" of new labour laws
(including the right to collective bargaining)
by the territory's new government. *
Thailand/Hong Kong
Whose money? Whose crisis?
The Hong Kong coalition Against the World Bank/IMF issued the following statement concerning IMF "aid" to Thailand
Hong Kong's Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa's has announcement that Hong Kong will commit US$1 billion to "rescue" the Thai economy from crisis. This money will be lent to the IMF, which will lend the money to the Thai government.
The IMF conditions are strict. The Thai government must promise to privatise public enterprises and public utilities and sell state assets, including land. The government must cut its spending on health, education and social welfare. Thailand must open up its economy to even more foreign investment and give foreign investors even greater freedom to destroy the environment and exploit workers. Government must cut subsidies to farmers and remove any protection of small farmers from big agri-business. Finally, the government must agree to réduce workers' wages to make the economy more "competitive"
What sort of "rescue" package is this? How will raising the cost of living and making more workers and farmers unemployed solve the problems faced by the Thai people?
This "rescue" package will only benefit the wealthy - rich landowners, business tycoons, bankers and financiers and foreign multinationals. Financial stability will protect their interests and their profit. But when this is all over it is the ordinary Thai people who will have to pay this money back, through higher taxes and government charges in the future.
In other words, Tung Chee Hwa pledged US$1 billion for the IMF to blackmail the Thai government. The deal will only postpone the current financial crisis and create an even greater crisis when the people of Thailand are forced to repay the loan.
What about the crisis here in Hong Kong? Every year the number of people in poverty is increasing. In the last 10 years the rate of inequality grew faster in
Hong Kong than in any other country in the region. The majority of the people of Hong Kong are finding it more and more difficult to earn a living wage and are struggling to maintain their livelihood. Housing rights are still denied to many people in poverty, while thousands more people are still waiting for decent public housing.
Workers who lost their jobs when factories shut down and moved to Guangdong [in mainland China] several years ago are still not able to find decent jobs with reasonable wages. Every year thousands of workers undergo "retraining" and after they have finished what awaits them? More unemployment. Young workers face low wages and endless part-time jobs, without learning any skills for their future. Older workers are discriminated against because of their age, and their skills and experience are completely ignored.
Does this sound like a place so rich that it can hand over money to the IMF for its business dealings? The working people of Hong Kong and Thailand face serious social and economic problems. But the solution is not to pretend that Hong Kong is so wealthy that it can gamble with the IMF. This money is better spent on increased social welfare, pensions, public housing, unemployment support and job creation in Hong Kong.
Most important of all, Hong Kong should not be financing a scheme in which the people of Thailand are threatened and forced to follow the policies of the IMF. The IMF's policies will only lead to more poverty and unemployment in Thailand, and make people's daily struggle to earn a living even more difficult.
Hong Kong should not be lending money like some sort of gangster state involved in the IMF mafia's threats and bribery. Such policies will only lead all of us further down the road to crisis. *
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* East Timor