Houston Community News >> Communist Party Branch Established at Wal-Mart China
12/18/2006 Beijing -- Employees
at Wal-Mart's China headquarters have set up a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
branch, the company and party said yesterday, amid a campaign to expand the
party's presence in foreign companies.
The move follows the success of China's state-sanctioned labor body this year in
setting up unions at the US retailer's outlets. Wal-Mart is one of China's
biggest and most prominent foreign employers, with a workforce of 36,000 and 68
stores.
The party branch was set up on Friday at Wal-Mart headquarters in the city of
Shenzhen, according to the party newspaper People's Daily and a Wal-Mart Stores
spokesman, Jonathan Dong.
"Quite a few of our associates [employees] are party members already, so they
have a right to establish branch organizations," Dong said.
Dong said he didn't know whether Wal-Mart would have any formal interaction with
the branch or whether its establishment would affect operations. Employees who
answered the phone at the CCP's Shenzhen office and wouldn't give their names
said they had no information on what the branch at the Wal-Mart headquarters
would do.
China's 70 million-member CCP and its affiliated All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTH) are trying to expand their presence in foreign companies to keep
pace with a fast-changing society amid capitalist-style economic reforms.
State industry, their traditional base, has slashed millions of jobs while
private companies are creating tens of millions more.
In a bid to stay relevant, the party has begun offering membership to
entrepreneurs and others in the new private economy.
The ACFTU, the umbrella body for unions permitted by the government, has
announced a target of setting up unions at 60 percent of China's 150,000 foreign
companies by the end of this year.
An ACFTU spokesman, Li Jianmin, said Monday he had no figures on how close the
body is to meeting that goal.
The party has not disclosed its own expansion target.
The party branch at Wal-Mart headquarters is the company's sixth in China,
according to Dong.
The first was set up Aug. 12 in Shenyang. Party officials there said it would
not interfere in store management. An official quoted by the state Xinhua news
agency said the Shenyang branch would encourage members to "to play an exemplary
role in doing a good job" and to help Wal-Mart grow.
Many foreign companies in China already have party branches, either officially
or unofficially.
One of the earliest was at US-based cellphone maker Motorola in Tianjin. The
branch officially was established in 1997, but news accounts say it was set up
as early as 1990 and kept secret in order to avoid alarming Motorola management.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, resisted the creation of unions at its
Chinese stores for two years before agreeing in August to help the ACFTU
organize its workers.
The party and labor expansion campaigns were ordered in March by President Hu
Jintao (胡錦濤), who also is the party's general-secretary, according to Chinese
media.
(Contributed by AP Beijing)