Han Dongfang delivers a stemwinder to Aussie trade unionists: So how about acknowledging this as a factor in contemporary Chinese political economy?
''Every day, somewhere in the country workers in factories and construction sites, street cleaners and bus drivers, teachers and shop workers withdraw their labour,'' he told the AWU's national conference on Wednesday.
''So the real question is what would happen if the authorities did try to repress these demands? If that happened, the Communist Party would truly put themselves in a huge threat to its power.
''It is one thing to suppress student and dissident-led calls for democracy, as the party did in the 1980s; it is quite another thing entirely to suppress the calls for a decent living from hundreds of millions of workers three decades later in the year 2013.''
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