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When Zhang Jun, a 44-year-old electrician at a Wal-Mart store east of Beijing, shared a Mao-era propaganda poster on his Weibo blog, he was making a point.

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In it, Mao beams over a group of mobilized workers, above a caption that reads: “The working class must lead everything.” Zhang wasn’t expressing his affection for Mao, but was using the communist leader’s words as part of a cat-and-mouse game with China’s only legal trade union – and Zhang’s own capitalist bosses in Bentonville, Ark.

Zhang leads a loosely defined movement called the “Wal-Mart China Staff Association.” It is neither huge, nor high-profile, and doesn’t have a national political agenda. What these activists are fighting for is the right to elect their trade union committee, one that would be recognizable as such to the West, one with collective bargaining power.