System No Help to China's Laid-Off Workers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31138-2005Jan23?language=printer

Couple Who Petitioned For Promised Benefits Get Jail Terms Instead

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A12


LIAOYUAN, China -- An ailing unemployed worker in this frigid
northeastern city, having exhausted all other options, made one final
appeal last month, to President Hu Jintao. In careful ideograms penned
from his sickbed, Zhao Lizhong pleaded with the most powerful man in
the country to pay attention to the poor and powerless, who, he said,
had nowhere else to turn.

"I told him the electricity company cheated us," Zhao recalled, showing
the determination that he and a band of laid-off friends have brought
to a four-year struggle with the powerful bureaucracy of China's
one-party government.