China's Model Worker Is No Average Yao
Ching-Ching Ni
Los Angeles Times
27 April 2005
At the height of Mao Tse-tung's push to make China an industrial giant, the model Communist worker was someone like the famed Iron Man Wang, an illiterate peasant so dedicated to finding more oil for the nation that he once leapt into a construction pit to mix cement with his own body.
Now, in a land of cell phones, high-tech workers and instant millionaires, Iron Man Wang's photos are literally museum pieces.
The new model worker stands 7-foot-5, wears baggy shorts to work and wields a deft jump hook. The only thing he leaps into are seas of autograph seekers and his custom-fitted BMW 745 -- the one with the backseat removed.
What's more, he doesn't even work in China.
Take a bow, Yao Ming.
The ruling Communist Party on Wednesday named the Houston Rockets' center as model worker for this year's May Day celebration. The list of nominees, which once honored hardworking factory workers and paraded them as inspiration for the masses, now celebrates the National Basketball Association, the chief executive officer of a software company and the chairman of an investment company.
Even Yao, who has a four-year contract with the Rockets worth $17.8 million, was surprised at receiving the award.
"Before, I thought model workers only recognized ordinary people who worked tirelessly and without asking for anything in return," the 24-year-old Yao said through his agent. "Now the award also includes someone like me, a special kind of migrant worker. That's a sign of progress."
But some Chinese say the party should still be extolling the success of socialist heroes.
"It's absurd," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at People's University in Beijing about Yao's award. "Model workers should be ordinary people you can look up to and imitate. Yao Ming is an NBA star. That's honor enough. Besides, what he does, it's impossible for ordinary people to imitate."
But for communists looking to generate interest in the award that many say is a relic of a bygone era, no one is a better pitchman than Yao.
In selecting him for the proletariat hall of fame, the Shanghai municipal government argued that its native son is the slam dunk symbol of a new China.
To many of his fans, the "Little Giant," as Yao is affectionately known here, is a poster child of patriotism. As a condition for joining the NBA, he was forced to share half of his NBA salary with Chinese sports authorities. It is unclear how much they take from the $70 million in endorsements he is expected to receive over the next 10 years from corporations including McDonalds, Apple Computer, Visa International, Tag Heuer and Garmin, a maker of global position products.
During the off-season, Yao splits his time between Houston and Shanghai.
His NBA salary alone makes Yao the most profitable single Chinese export to the United States. But officials deny that Yao's cash-cow status was a factor in his selection as a model worker.
"Yao Ming is nominated because he meets all the qualifications of a model worker," said Yin Weimin, deputy minister of the Chinese Ministry of Personnel, which selects the model workers. "He is a great athlete. He has contributed greatly to the development of the basketball industry in China and gained much glory for the country. His personal wealth is another issue altogether."
The evolution of the model worker contest mirrors the dramatic changes that have swept China since the communists came to power more than five decades ago.
The early role models included Shi Chuanxiang, who devoted more than 40 years shoveling and carrying manure from holes-in-the ground public bathrooms in Beijing. State media say Shi was such a dedicated worker that he didn't take time off even for his own wedding. His bride carried a rooster as a stand-in during the marriage ceremony.
Mao's prototypical model worker was Iron Man Wang Jinxi. He was the leader of a drilling brigade when oil was first discovered in 1960 in Daqing, China's frozen northeastern border with Russia. Chinese government propaganda often repeated his famous battle cry to do whatever it takes to pump oil for the country, even if it means "giving up 20 years of my life." He died at age 47. Grainy black and white photos at the Memorial Hall of the Ironman in Daqing show Wang mixing the cement.
Since market oriented reforms began more than 20 years ago, the party began to expand the definition of the people's vanguard. Intellectuals joined the ranks of model workers. But the lack of public accountability in the selection process gave rise to a patronage system that rewarded political elites.
To the government's embarrassment, several model workers have been convicted of stealing public assets in recent years. They include a party secretary at a Beijing electronics factory, deputy manager of a construction conglomerate in Hunan province, a transportation department head in Henan province.
In the past, model workers received social benefits such as better housing and coveted university admission. Now, they receive the equivalent of $1,800.
"It comes with perks like high social status and TV appearances," said Zhou, the People's University sociologist. "It's a kind of personal branding."
To give the awards more legitimacy this year, authorities launched a series of changes. Capitalists, once seen as oppressors of the people, can now receive nation's top honor. So can migrant workers, roughly 210 million people who left their rural homes for work in China's booming cities.
Migrant workers and private entrepreneurs made up a minority of the estimated 2,900 nominees this year. The government media confirmed Wednesday that Yao was selected as a model worker, but gave little information about the other nominees. About 80 percent of the nominees are party members. Half of the nominees work for state-owned enterprises. About 20 percent are farmers.
Some observers said Beijing included migrant workers this year to give the impression that it was promoting a more pluralistic society .
"The party is trying to present itself as a party that represents everybody, all social classes without exception," Robin Munro, research director of China Labor Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based group that monitors labor abuses in mainland China. "The government feels it needs celebrity endorsement of someone like Yao Ming to make it self more popular. It's a pointless distraction from the real issues facing China as a whole."
Many migrant workers who toil for long hours, receive little pay and have no elected representatives to negotiate on their behalf, say they did not know the criteria for being a model worker.
"What's the point of understanding it? They will never pick one of us," said Wei Yanzhou, 42, a welder from Hubei province.
Wei works about 12 hours a day, seven days a week for about $100 a month. If he takes a sick day, the boss deducts the $5 daily wage from his pay. He doesn't see much of his paycheck until the end of the year, when he returns to the farm during the spring festival to see his wife and two young children.
Wei considers himself lucky. Many migrant workers receive no wages from employers who claim to be bankrupt or disappear with their hard earned money.
At the end of the day, workers like Wei are shuttled back to factory dorms where they sleep more than a dozen to a small room. There is no running water, no heat and ventilation and little food.
"We eat cabbage three times a day, sometimes the rice has sand in it," said Zhu Zhou, a brick layer, who looks a decade older than his 40 years. "We see meat maybe twice a week. We don't even get enough drinking water never mind a shower."
The workers say they get no days off, not even during the week long May Day celebration.
"They should pick us as model workers," said Fu Xiewen, 31, a carpenter from Anhui province. "Everybody already knows who Yao Ming is. He's a star. We are nobodies. We can sure use some improvements on our living conditions."