Camioneros protestan en China por el alza de los costos. Las protestas comenzaron el Miercoles, mas de 1,000 camioneros salieron a protestar, muchos fueron apresados por la policia. El Jueves bloquearon la entrada del CIMC Logistics. Piden un aumento en el pago por el alza de la gasolina y otros costos.
Chinese Truckers Protest Over Costs
By JAMES T. AREDDY
SHANGHAI—At least hundreds of truckers held protests over rising costs in China's commercial metropolis, prompting a police response and illustrating the potential for inflation to fuel unrest in the world's No. 2 economy.
The protests began Wednesday, with possibly more than 1,000 truckers gathering near the Shanghai CIMC Vehicles Logistics Equipment Co., according to witnesses, who said several were detained by police. On Thursday, the entrance to CIMC Logistics was blocked by two containers set down in the road, and access was controlled by police. Nearby, in the north Shanghai district of Baoshan, truckers vowed in interviews Thursday that they would continue agitating for higher pay that they say is needed as fuel and other costs rise.
Policemen take away a truck driver and his wife, holding their child, near a port in Shanghai Thursday.
.Wire services reported demonstrations Thursday in at least one other port area of Shanghai, involving clashes with police.
Trucking traffic remained heavy Thursday around Shanghai and there was little sign that the unrest had disrupted activity through a container port that, by some rankings, is the world's busiest.
Still, the trucker protests and the robust police response offered the latest illustrations of the risk to social stability in China posed by inflation that last month hit its fastest pace in 32 months. Even before inflation began to accelerate last year, China was hit by protests by workers striking for more pay, and authorities have lately struggled to prevent farmers from hoarding grain until price demands are met, while many less well-off urbanites have voiced frustration about soaring food and housing costs.
People walk along an unfinished road being used by truck drivers to park their container trucks near a port in Shanghai Thursday, following a protest nearby the area earlier in the morning.
.China's government has taken a raft of measures to battle inflation—which at higher levels has triggered unrest in China in the past—including four interest-rate increases in the last six months. Premier Wen Jiabao has said repeatedly that taming consumer prices is the country's top economic priority this year.
Inflation is battering developing economies around the world—in part because superlow interest rates in developed economies like the U.S. have propelled capital into faster-growing economies. Soaring food costs were a factor in the unrest roiling some Middle Eastern countries.
But China's trucker demonstrations—triggered partly by rising costs for diesel—suggest that the effectiveness of those policies has limits. China's government controls the price of diesel and other fuels. While it has raised prices repeatedly, its increases have lagged the surge in crude oil: State-set prices for diesel and gasoline have risen about 10% this year, as crude has surged more than 20%. But with diesel in China at about 97 U.S. cents per liter now, according to Nomura Securities Co., Chinese drivers get a break because it is still about a tenth cheaper than in the U.S. market and less than half the European price.
Groups like the International Energy Agency have called on China to adopt more market-based pricing to encourage conservation and reduce the fiscal burden of subsidizing refiners.
Periodic fuel-price protests around four years ago in China resulted in new subsidies for some of those complaining of being hard hit, such as taxi drivers. More recently, China's government has signaled anxiety at the possibility economic hardship, including inflation, might ignite political opposition like that seen in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Thursday's visible police presence at a Shanghai container depot underscored the government's active efforts to snuff out complaints.
A spokesman couldn't be reached for CIMC Logistics, a subsidiary of giant freight mover and equipment maker China International Marine Containers (Group) Co. The company's silver office building in northern Shanghai was flanked Thursday by police vans, including the kind of vehicle that contains sophisticated recording equipment sometimes used to control large crowds.
In a repair shop nearby, where several trucks idled, hitched to empty trailers with the CIMC logo, around a dozen drivers said they had participated in Wednesday's action. They declined to offer full names, saying they worried for their own safety, especially because Wednesday's protest—they estimated that more than 4,000 people took part, though no crowd numbers could be verified—was ignored by Shanghai's government media and cellphone photos of the incident that had circulated on the internet has been removed.
"Everything is going up except the transportation payment," groused a 38-year-old driver surnamed Han, referring to the compensation he is paid for hauling a CIMC container.
Mr. Han said he might take home 200 yuan, around $30, out of a 1,200 payment for a day's work using the CNHTC-brand truck he bought for 400,000 yuan to move a container about 100 kilometers between Suzhou and Shanghai. The 1,200 yuan payment hasn't changed in a decade, he said, and is increasingly eroded by rising diesel prices, toll charges, port fees and other costs.
Mr. Han and the others vowed not to work until rates go up—but also conceded in an industry not lacking in drivers that no assignments had been offered to them in the past day. Asked what he normally hauled, Mr. Han laughed, "It's for export, to your America. What you eat, what you drink, anything you spend money on."
The Associated Press reported agitation at port depots both in Shanghai's Baoshan and Pudong districts.
Reuters, citing two participants, said that some 2,000 truck drivers had protested Wednesday and Thursday, clashing with baton-wielding police at an intersection near the Waigaoqiao port. The report couldn't be confirmed.