“I wanted to cry out to them, and somehow stop what was going on, but I realised I had no power in the situation,” Chen’s friend said. “I thought instead I have to do something to save them, and tell friends about what had happened.

“Of course this isn’t the first time – so many have been arrested, but it was the first time I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I felt powerless, and I couldn’t accept what I was seeing,” the friend said.

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Police at Nanshitou police station in Guangzhou, where Chen was reportedly taken, said by phone that they would not answer questions from journalists.

Known as “Xiangzi”, Chen – a long-time activist with international experience – co-founded the social media platform “Heart Sanitation” one year ago to organise sanitation workers and improve their working conditions.

Friends and colleagues say Chen had long been watched by police, and the risk of detention increased with the rising popularity of Heart Sanitation, where workers could share their experiences in their struggle to defend their rights.

“The platform was becoming popular with sanitation workers around Guangzhou. They had helped people get a lot of money that they were owed,” said Yu Wucang, a sanitation worker and activist in Guangzhou who knew Chen.

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Earlier this month a post on the Heart Sanitation website reported that sanitation workers at station #7 in Tianhe district had signed permanent contracts with their employer, after only being offered short-term contracts.

Another report from last week said 130 workers in Guangzhou’s University Town district had received 1.82 million yuan (US$260,000) in unpaid holiday bonuses and other back wages, following a strike and negotiations with employers. 

“He was doing the work the government is supposed to do – helping workers get what is owed to them by law. But it seems that, in the eyes of some people, this is not acceptable,” Yu said.

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In 2013 Chen published a widely circulated letter calling for better pay for his university’s sanitation workers, and became a key figure in their struggle. Following a two-week strike, and fuelled by student and NGO support, 200 sanitation workers who were facing lay-offs instead won new contracts in 2014.

But Chen’s university threatened to fail him before his graduation in 2015, so he instead travelled to the United States to study labour issues in a master’s programme at Penn State University.

Around a dozen major labour advocates have been taken by Chinese police this year, in a marked escalation of the years-long tightening of the space for social activism under President Xi Jinping.

Elaine Hui, Chen’s teacher at Penn State, said that, while she hoped for the best, it was likely he would be detained for a while, based on the current trend in China.

“Since Xi Jinping came into power, he has adopted a harsher approach to labour activists,” Hui said. “It seems like the government has now adopted a more pre-emptive approach, even arresting those that have done nothing very disruptive.”

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Sanitation workers suffer from low pay, long hours and precarious work conditions, according to Geoffrey Crothall, director of communications at China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based labour rights organisation, but sanitation worker actions had continued to grow in number.

Statistics from China Labour Bulletin’s strike map, which catalogues worker strikes and protests, recorded 15 sanitation worker strikes and protests across the country this year, up from 11 recorded the previous year.

Chen’s detention, and the disappearance of his colleagues, followed similar actions against a dozen or more labour activists in 2019, Crowthall said.

“This year definitely marks an intensification of a crackdown on labour activists, though that crackdown has being going on for many years,” said Crothall.

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A widespread round-up of around 25 labour activists occurred in December 2015, some of whom served lengthy prison sentences.

Chen’s international experience may have attracted police attention, said Eli Friedman, assistant professor in the department of sociology at Cornell University, who worked with Chen on a project recording China’s labour history.

Friedman said Chen, who also kept an English-language blog on China labour issues, was known by labour activists and academics internationally, and his arrest would sound alarm bells in other countries.

“[Chen’s audience abroad] see him as someone who can help build bridges between China and foreign countries, and in part, that might be what the government finds threatening about him, because they don’t want those bridges to be built,” Friedman said.