Chen Guojiang, alliance leader of the Outrider Alliance. (Photo credit: video screenshot)
In a March 17 announcement, Chinese human rights defenders urged the Chinese Communist Party authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Chen Guojiang and demanded that he should be allowed to contact his Family and meet with them or a lawyer appointed by his family while he is in detention. The announcement also called on the CCP to ensure citizens’ freedom of association, expression and communication, and the right to organize to protect labor rights.
Chen Guojiang’s father, Chen Wanhua, posted a letter of request for help online on March 15, publicly raising funds to raise money for legal fees. The letter revealed that after his son’s arrest on Feb. 25, there was information that he was being held in Beijing‘s Chaoyang District Detention Center, but the family has not received any notice of detention from the authorities. Chen Guojiang’s sister called the Chaoyang police and was told that the detention notice had been sent long ago.
Chen’s father’s letter asking for help was quickly deleted and his fundraising account was blocked. However, the Chen family sent a message to the WeChat public number of the Outward Bound Jianghu Knight Alliance on the afternoon of March 16, revealing that the fundraising had been completed, of which more than 55,000 yuan (RMB, same below) had been received through Alipay and more than 68,000 yuan through WeChat, and that a lawyer had been found and a meeting had been scheduled for March 24.
Chen Guojiang before his arrest, had sent a video accusing “hungry”, “Meituan” and other takeaway platforms to launch the reward activities suspected of deception. After the “hungry” in the official microblogging apologized to riders, promised to increase compensation activities. But outsiders believe that Chen was arrested not only because of this incident.
The Voice of America made several attempts to contact a delivery person who was willing to be interviewed but could only speak in text for fear of having his voice collected by the police.
The deliveryman said he believed that Chen Guojiang, the “master of the alliance,” had not broken any laws and was only fighting for the rights of the delivery community.
“I am also shocked, all his activities are open, there is no illegal place. The web upload ally was arrested for exposing the ‘hungry’ deception of riders, and I think he did the right thing. ‘Hungry’ platform in the Spring Festival set the reward conditions too harsh, and there is a desire to deliberately deduct the benefits of the takeaway workers. As individual takeaway workers have absolutely no right to negotiate with the platform, either by the platform wanton exploitation and oppression, or their own solidarity to fight for their rights, can not count on others. For the sake of the riders’ interests to be protected, so I think it is just for the allies to reflect this matter to the media. But it also destroys the bourgeoisie’s beautiful dream, so they arrested the organizers of such a rider alliance.”
An independent commentator, who also preferred to be interviewed only in writing for fear of having his voice recognized, also said that the authorities have always feared that labor would form organizations that would threaten the interests of the employers and the stability of the regime. This is the same thinking as the crackdown on the Shenzhen Jiashi labor movement a few years ago.
The commentator, who has long been concerned about the labor situation in mainland China, said: “In fact, the alliance was arrested not only because he had previously questioned on behalf of riders ‘hungry’ during the Spring Festival reward program to cheat riders and force ‘hungry’ to apologize The ‘hungry’ on the joint police retaliation against him, but also because he previously engaged in rider mutual aid organizations take-away riders Union has the prototype of the take-away staff union, and independent unions not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party is the most scandalous, they want to capture the thief first, kill the chicken to the monkey see.”
The Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin counted a whopping 121 traffic accidents involving riders included in 2018, including 19 incidents in which riders were killed delivering Food; in comparison, rider strikes and protests increased from 10 in 2017 to 45 in 2019, and by the year of the 2020 Epidemic, many takeaway workers will be forced to endure as the takeaway industry becomes one of the few channels for a large number of underemployed workers to earn income a variety of unreasonable platform regulations and steadily declining wages, while there have been only three collective actions.
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