{"id":744,"date":"2026-07-20T10:35:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crpnews.com\/asia\/?p=744"},"modified":"2026-07-20T11:06:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:06:48","slug":"chinas-upsurging-strike-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crpnews.com\/asia\/chinas-upsurging-strike-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s Upsurging Strike Trend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this article, we try to spot and document the upsurge in the workers strike trend in China, accompanying its transformations since 2022.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

China is still the world’s worker’s strike capital. This fact is not always visible or percepted as such. The government of Xi Jinping, much to the linking of the capitalists, closes the siege against worker’s strikes with severity. Nevertheless, behind a facade of a unified, high-tech global powerhouse, this nation grapples with deep-rooted social unrest. Authorities frequently try to sweep these recurring conflicts under the rug, but undeniable reality makes them impossible to hide.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The class struggle in China over recent decades has developed in the context of the country\u2019s astonishing cycles of economic growth. In the first decade of the 2000s, rural struggles emerged prominently amid significant labor migration to export-oriented cities. Small farmers and rural workers clashed with local governments over the expropriation of their land, the advance of real estate development, and the rise of U.S.-style agribusiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the cities, from 2004 to 2008, strike movements blended the distinct characteristics of the Rust Belt in the North (where the former large-scale danwei<\/em> system saw workers fighting layoffs and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises) and the Solar Belt in the South (where migrant rural workers demanded an end to wage delays, the abolition of corporal punishment and military discipline in production, and improved working conditions in modern export-oriented industries). As Ching Kwan Lee explains, in these \u201crust and sun belts,\u201d which encompass differentiated production systems, prolonged strikes, such as the two-month strike by 6,000 workers at the Tianwang textile factory in Xianyang, Shaanxi, were often accompanied by shorter strikes in the Pearl River Delta, the heart of China\u2019s low-value-added industry, which were swiftly suppressed by the police, as noted by Ching Kwan Lee, in Against the Law: Labor Protests in China\u2019s Rustbelt and Sunbelt<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wave of strikes peaked in 2010 with the strike at Foshan Honda in Guangdong, where workers achieved wage increases and defeated the Japanese multinational. This victory influenced later strikes at other car manufacturers, such as Toyota and Mitsubishi, as well as at Foxconn, which garnered attention for the suicides of workers amid poor factory conditions. Since Xi\u2019s inauguration in 2013, there has been a notable resurgence of state coercion and repression against strikes; as Manfred Elfstrom points out, the 2010 wave was followed by a gradual decline in labor unrest. The official discourse of \u201cnational unity for China\u2019s rise as a power\u201d took hold, coinciding with the end of the cycle of exponential growth in Chinese GDP amid the global economic crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese economy entered a \u201cnew normal,\u201d characterized by a slowdown in growth and declines in key segments of GDP, particularly the real estate sector, affected by a demographic crisis and stabilized urban migration flows. To mitigate unexpected economic shocks amid renewed competition with the United States, Xi adopted a stance of total repression against workers\u2019 economic resistance, dismantling efforts to create independent unions, such as the 2018 Jasic Technologies strike, which had garnered student solidarity while increasing the national average wage from very low levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labor unrest in China has seen a significant, multi-year spike following the lifting of “Zero-Covid” restrictions, driven primarily by economic slowdowns, real estate defaults, and a wave of factory closures and relocations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the Chinese government does not publish official strike statistics and forbids independent trade unions, the most reliable data comes from civil society tracking groups, primarily the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB)<\/strong> and Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor (CDM)<\/strong>.<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a breakdown of the overall trend data and the most high-profile strikes from the last few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall Labor Strike Trends (2022\u20132025)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The year 2023 marked the highest surge in labor actions since China’s massive “strike wave” ended in 2016. The total documented strikes in 2023 appear as such: CLB recorded 1,789 strikes and collective labor actions, a massive 216% jump compared to 2022 (830 cases). Over 90%<\/strong> of all recorded incidents are categorized as defensive strikes. Rather than demanding better benefits, workers took to the streets to demand wage arrears (unpaid back wages)<\/strong> or mandatory legal severance after sudden employer bankruptcies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breakdown by Key Sectors (CLB 2023 Data)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sector<\/strong><\/td>% of Strikes<\/strong><\/td>Primary Cause<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/thead>
Construction<\/strong><\/td>53%<\/strong> (945 cases)<\/td>Massive defaults among property giants (like Evergrande, Country Garden) leaving migrant workers unpaid.<\/td><\/tr>
Manufacturing<\/strong><\/td>24%<\/strong> (438 cases)<\/td>Global supply chain decoupling; rapid factory closures or silent relocations to inland provinces or Southeast Asia.<\/td><\/tr>
Services & Retail<\/strong><\/td>12%<\/strong> (208 cases)<\/td>Closures of retail chains, gyms, and tech-adjacent logistics.<\/td><\/tr>
Logistics & Transport<\/strong><\/td>6%<\/strong> (115 cases)<\/td>Lowering piece-rate wages for gig workers and delivery drivers.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While thousands of actions happen on a small scale (usually involving dozens to a few hundred workers to avoid severe police crackdowns), several major incidents have disrupted global supply chains or set significant precedents. The Zhengzhou Foxconn iPhone Factory Riots<\/strong> were the most importante feature in the class struggle since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: tens of thousands of workers participated in the grinding clash against the company and the police. At the world\u2019s largest iPhone assembly plant, rigorous “closed-loop” Covid quarantines sparked severe panic. When Foxconn delayed promised bonus payments to newly recruited workers to keep lines moving, mass protests erupted. Workers openly clashed with riot police. Foxconn eventually backed down, offering 10,000 RMB (~$1,400 USD) to any newly hired worker willing to leave peacefully, halting production and heavily disrupting Apple’s global holiday supply. Beijing was involved in trying to defuse the discontent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Zhengzhou strike in November 2022<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shanwei Meituan Delivery Drivers Strike (April 2023) was an important event after the Zhengzhou affair: hundreds of local gig workers, backed by nationwide online solidarity. Meituan, China’s massive food delivery app, canceled local rider subsidies and reduced per-order payout rates in Shanwei (Guangdong province). Drivers went on strike for over a week. This was highly notable because Meituan attempted to break the strike by flying in non-local drivers and offering them higher rates. Local riders aggressively boycotted, and consumers joined in out of solidarity, marking a rare example of coordinated resistance in the heavily monitored gig economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notable also was the strike at the Bao Chen Shoe Factory Strike (November 2023), in which thousands of workers in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, paralyzed production. Bao Chen Corporation is a key global supplier manufacturing shoes for major international sportswear brands, and decided to downscale operations to pivot investments to India. To lower legally required severance packages, the factory deliberately slashed workers’ base salaries in the months leading up to the closure. The outcome? Massive strikes forced corporate management and local labor bureaus to step in. It spotlighted a growing tactic among multinational suppliers trying to exit coastal China on a budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state’s response to labor movements has become heavily systemized under President Xi Jinping. While workers have learned to use diverse, localized tactics\u2014such as sit-ins, blocking factory gates, and leveraging WeChat or QQ chatrooms for rapid coordination\u2014state tracking is aggressive, and repression is brutal. In 2023 alone, Chinese riot police confirmed to have intervened in at least 181 documented labor strikes<\/strong><\/a>, resulting in multiple worker detentions and the sentencing of prominent labor tracking activists (such as Wang Jianbing) to prison to prevent a unified, national workers’ movement from forming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the conditions that breed insatisfaction are ubiquitous. A system of normalized forced overtime among white-collar workers persists despite China officially having an eight-hour workday, with the workweek not allowed to exceed 44 hours. In the technology industry, workers are expected to participate in an overtime practice referred to as \u201c996,\u201d from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. This overtime practice dovetails with age discrimination, as workers over 35 are perceived as unable to handle these long hours and are therefore subject to hiring discrimination. Meanwhile, the PRC continues to deny its workers the right to unionize. Such conditions prompted the Chinese youth to muster new forms of demonstration. The concepts of tang ping<\/em> (\u8eba\u5e73, or “lying flat”) and bai lan<\/em> (\u6446\u70c2, or “lei it rot”)<\/a> are Chinese youth slang terms that describe a rejection of hyper-competitive hustle culture, that emerged in 2021 as a passive protest against this grueling “996” work schedule. The first means adopting a low-desire life to escape intense social expectations; whereas the second represents a deliberate abandonment of difficult goals when things deteriorate. Instead of grinding for property, marriage, and career status, adherents choose the bare minimum to get by, focusing on rest and personal well-being<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to the National Bureau of Statistics<\/a>, China’s surveyed urban unemployment rate for youths aged 16 to 24, excluding students, fell to 14.9% in June 2026. This marked a drop from 15.6% in May and reached the lowest level in 12 months (in 2023, the rate was as high as 21.3%).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new manifestations of grievance appeared combined with classical models of protests, mainly worker’s strikes. According to the comprehensive annual data compiled by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), worker unrest in China remained at high pre-pandemic levels throughout 2024. While the total number of documented actions dipped slightly from the historic, post-lockdown surge of 2023, the data shows a highly significant, painful shift: strikes in the manufacturing sector surged to their highest levels in nearly a decade<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The total documented “incidents” (worker’s protests or strikes) were high. 1,509 collective labor actions were recorded in 2024 (down slightly from 1,794 in 2023). The overwhelming grievance was wage arrears, again: 88% of all labor disputes in 2024 were driven by unpaid back wages and abrupt job losses without legally mandated severance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breakdown by Industry (CLB 2024 Data)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sector<\/strong><\/td>Number of Incidents<\/strong><\/td>% of Total<\/strong><\/td>The 2024 Economic Reality<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/thead>
Construction<\/strong><\/td>733<\/strong><\/td>48.6%<\/strong><\/td>Down from 2023, but still the highest. A staggering 17.1% slump in new home sales left real estate giants entirely illiquid, leaving migrant workers stranded without pay.<\/td><\/tr>
Manufacturing<\/strong><\/td>452<\/strong><\/td>30.0%<\/strong><\/td>Up from 438 in 2023.<\/strong> Multinational companies cut costs and diversified supply chains away from China, leading to sudden electronics and apparel factory closures.<\/td><\/tr>
Services & Retail<\/strong><\/td>148<\/strong><\/td>9.8%<\/strong><\/td>Shifts in consumer behavior and the aggressive rise of e-commerce caused traditional brick-and-mortar and gym chains to implode.<\/td><\/tr>
Transport & Logistics<\/strong><\/td>64<\/strong><\/td>4.2%<\/strong><\/td>Price wars between ride-hailing and express delivery platforms directly squeezed the piece-rate wages of gig workers.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unrest was concentrated heavily in China’s export-driven coastal powerhouses, though local government debt also triggered actions inland. Guangdong: 346 incidents (The epicenter of manufacturing closures). Shandong: 106 incidents. Zhiang: 101 incidents. As for some notable inland disruptions: Henan (80), Hebei (69), and Shaanxi (59) heavily driven by public sector constraints and construction pauses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Heilongjiang Forest Farm Strike (Winter 2024) was widely considered the largest singular strike of the year, involving thousands of state-owned forest farm workers in northeast China. It was a rare, massive collective action within a state-owned enterprise<\/em> (SOE) over unfair working conditions and benefit cuts, pushing past the usual micro-scale boundaries of Chinese protests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had also the The Shenzhen Vanke Apartment Blockades (December 2024), when construction workers completely blocked the entrances of newly built, premium residential apartments built by developer giant Vanke. This was significant, because Vanke was long considered one of the safer, more stable developers compared to the collapsed Evergrande. These blockades proved that wage defaults had successfully infected even the top tier of China’s real estate market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then we had maybe the most importante, the Guangdong Electronics & Apparel Closures<\/strong>, when dozens of mid-sized electronics and clothing suppliers in Dongguan and Shenzhen quietly halted production lines, cut overtime (which workers rely on to survive), or tried to relocate to inland provinces without paying workers their accumulated housing funds and social insurance. This drove the ten-year peak in manufacturing strikes<\/em><\/strong>. Rather than fighting for higher wages, the defining 2024 factory strike was a bitter legal fight just to collect back-pay before the boss vanished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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China’s official legal system is buckling under the weight. Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor<\/em> noted that formal labor disputes filed with local government offices skyrocketed to 665,000 cases in 2024<\/strong>\u2014a massive 510% increase compared to 2007, despite China’s total working population actually being 3% smaller today.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

2025 Big Spike <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

2024 was not the end of it. And to track China’s strikes became considerably trickier. A major turning point occurred when the China Labour Bulletin (CLB)<\/strong>\u2014the primary independent tracking group for Chinese strikes \u2014 was abruptly dissolved by Beijing’s direct orders. This left Freedom House\u2019s China Dissent Monitor (CDM)<\/strong> as the premier authority tracking collective actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The data reveals a dramatic spike in unrest across the country. Instead of cooling down, public dissent reached new heights as economic strain deepened. Andrea Ferrario points out<\/a> that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“According to Freedom House data cited by Bloomberg, in 2025 workers\u2019 protests increased by 44% compared to the previous year, with Guangdong as the main epicentre of the unrest. This is a province that exports more than the Netherlands on its own and has been the country\u2019s industrial engine for decades, but which has lagged behind national growth for four consecutive years, dragged down by the property slump and the price war that is eroding corporate margins”.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The CDM logged 5,343 total dissent events<\/strong><\/a>, a staggering 44% rise<\/strong> over the 3,704 events documented in the previous year. Workers led 54% of all protest events<\/strong> across China, far outpacing property owners and rural residents. Labor protests over unpaid wages hit an all-time peak. A severe slowdown in the Chinese economy left thousands of businesses entirely unable to pay workers their due wages, resulting in a 60% surge<\/strong> in pre-Lunar New Year wage protests. Guangdong province<\/strong> remained the absolute hotspot, accounting for 16% of all protests, followed closely by Henan, Hunan, Shaanxi, and Zhejiang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gig economy\u2014encompassing food delivery riders (Meituan<\/em>, Ele.me<\/em>), ride-hailing drivers (Didi<\/em>), and app-based courier networks\u2014swelled to 280 million people<\/strong>, making up roughly 44% of China’s entire workforce<\/strong>.<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the real estate and manufacturing sectors shed jobs, millions of unemployed workers flooded into the gig economy as a “safety net.” This saturation triggered severe friction, lower payouts, and widespread strikes. Because anyone working even one hour a week is considered employed by the state, the government aggressively encouraged platform work. However, the massive influx of workers severely outpaced consumer demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gig economy\/platform workers, specially ride-hailing drivers and app-based courier workers, became a central category in the Chinese working classe. As The Economist<\/em> noted<\/a>, tens of millions of young people in China now use tech platforms to find jobs for fleeting periods; fully 200m, or 40% of the urban labour force, depend on some kind of flexible work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lately gig work in China has spread to its vaunted manufacturing sector. The regimented proletariat is often replaced by millions of casual workers who fill jobs \u201con-demand\u201d, flitting from one factory floor to another at the direction of giant recruitment platforms. This ultraliberal measure fits Xi Jinping’s project for China: high-tech savvy coupled with precarity. The jobs often require no skills beyond a knowledge of the Roman alphabet. The workers may stick with them for no more than a few weeks or even days. Researchers put their number at perhaps 40m, a third of China\u2019s manufacturing workforce\u2014and more than three times the size of America\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The fortunes of these precarious workers, many of whom struggle to buy property and gain access to public services and benefits, is sahping China\u2019s economy and society for years to come. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the class struggle arena, also. While food delivery riders managed a slight increase in hourly pay, ride-hailing drivers saw their average wages shrink by 1.8%<\/strong>. This compression triggered waves of spontaneous “log-off strikes” where groups of drivers in major hubs like Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Chongqing simultaneously turned off their apps. Drivers usually park their cars or delivery bikes en masse<\/em> outside transport hubs when protesting sudden algorithmic changes that cut their per-kilometer rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A defining flashpoint of gig worker unrest was sparked by a viral incident where a food delivery worker was forced to kneel before a shopping mall security guard<\/a>, begging to pass so he wouldn’t miss his strict algorithmic deadline. The image triggered localized strikes and flash gatherings of hundreds of delivery riders who refused to pick up orders from specific commercial zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Videos of a delivery rider kneeling before a security guard has led to protests in China
<\/em>
Workers targeted the invisible “algorithmic trap”\u2014systems that automatically dock pay or penalize a driver\u2019s internal score for delays caused by factors completely out of their control (such as elevator wait times, mall security protocols, or restaurant delays).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As traditional industries like manufacturing and construction shed millions of jobs, the platform economy\u2014encompassing food delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers, and app-based couriers\u2014swelled to absorb nearly 44% of China’s total workforce<\/strong><\/a>. This massive influx has transformed the gig economy from an economic safety net into a hyper-saturated pressure cooker. With too many workers chasing too few orders, the platforms have adjusted their algorithms to squeeze per-mile payouts, turning gig worker friction into a primary driver of urban unrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Between 2023 and 2024, we saw grand movements in the Shanwei Meituan Delivery Riders Strike and the Wuhan T3 Mobility Ride-Hailing Strike. The first, as we said at the beggining, was caused by the elimination of rider subsidies, pay rate cuts, and punitive algorithmic penalties during bad weather. Hundreds of food delivery riders for Meituan in Shanwei (Guangdong province) simultaneously logged off the app, refusing to accept orders for over a week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the second one, hundreds of ride-hailing drivers for T3 Mobility (one of China’s largest state-backed competitors to Didi) organized a massive vehicular strike, parking their cars en masse outside the corporate headquarters and municipal offices in Wuhan. By mid-2024, Wuhan’s ride-hailing market was so oversaturated that drivers were working 14-hour days just to break even on the car rental before making any personal profit. When T3 Mobility refused to lower the monthly lease rates or cap the influx of new drivers, the drivers initiated a synchronized work stoppage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because gig workers became a potent force for coordinated resistance, the state apparatus of the PCC aggressively cracked down on their communication networks. Throughout the year, local worker networks\u2014like the Riders\u2019 Rights Concern Group<\/em>\u2014were forced to abruptly dissolve under intense political pressure. Activists monitoring platforms like Douyin (China’s TikTok) noted that two-thirds of all posts regarding offline strikes and police detentions were systematically deleted<\/strong><\/a> within hours of being posted to keep protests from spreading across city lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The wave of gig worker strikes forced Beijing into a major policy shift. Authorities scrambled to draft sweeping legal mandates regarding minimum pay floors, mandatory injury compensation, and caps on algorithmic pressure. While these rules aim to ease the precise tensions that caused the strikes, they weren’t able to evade them, and independent labor organizing remains completely forbidden.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, in the construction sector, we saw dozens of coordinated sit-ins and banner-unfurling protests took place outside offices of distressed property developers across Henan, Guangdong, and Shaanxi provinces. Workers blocked site gates or climbed rooftop scaffolding holding banners reading “Pay us our blood and sweat money.”<\/em> As Andrea Ferrario notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“The independent monitoring channel \u2018Yesterday\u2019, based in Canada and gathering testimonies from Chinese social media, documented fifty incidents of collective protest in January 2026 alone. The nature of the protests paints a picture of a society where divisions are multiplying along multiple lines. Workers, the vast majority of whom are employed in the construction sector, account for around a third of the cases, with grievances centring almost entirely on unpaid wages, factories closed or relocated without notice, and pay cuts without justification.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There wer also factory machinery lockdowns: In coastal manufacturing hubs (Zhejiang, Guangdong), migrant workers staged round-the-clock factory floor occupations after owners attempted “stealth relocations”\u2014secretly moving equipment overnight to avoid paying legally mandated severance packages. The gig economy continues to fuel this strike trend in 2026, with worker disruptions at Meituan, Ele.me and Didi<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

New trends<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is a certain pattern in China’s strike landscape, a shift from “offensive” demands to “defensive” survival, part of a trend that increased in Xi Jinping’s reign. By no means that’s a rule – in fact, in the gig economy, the strikes are booming in order to establish new workers rights. During the economic boom of the 2010s, workers went on strike to demand higher wages, better benefits, or safer working conditions. That is true today; although, as a by-product of the PCC main orientation (enlarge the overtures to foreign and native capital) nearly 90% of all labor actions have a defensive component: workers are fighting to recover months of unpaid back wages or to secure legally mandated severance packages from employers on the brink of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The composition of manufacturing strikes has shifted from expansion disputes to exit disputes. As multinational corporations aggressively diversify their supply chains away from China to Southeast Asia, India, or Mexico, factories in coastal hubs like Guangdong are closing or quietly relocating inland. Workers have realized that a factory’s quiet downscaling\u2014cutting overtime or reducing shifts\u2014is a precursor to abandonment. Consequently, modern factory strikes are characterized by urgent, preemptive blockades designed to freeze assets before factory owners can vanish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the other corner, new sectors of workers are striking. Construction strikes were viewed as isolated friction involving rural migrant laborers working for minor, predatory subcontractors. However, the prolonged real estate crisis has pushed defaults into the highest echelons of the industry. Strikes and construction site blockades now regularly target state-backed or top-tier developers that were once considered “too big to fail”. This has fundamentally broken the myth of real estate stability, transforming construction strikes into a systemic economic grievance that bleeds directly into the financial sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we remarked, the gig economy (ride-hailing, couriers) is also changing the strike landscape. The nature of platform strikes has evolved from traditional picketing to digital and algorithmic resistance. Because gig workers lack physical workplaces, they utilize spontaneous “log-off strikes.” Groups of delivery riders or ride-hailing drivers coordinates via encrypted chatrooms to simultaneously turn off their apps in high-density commercial hubs. These strikes directly target the platform’s algorithmic core, creating localized artificial shortages that force companies to temporarily alter pricing structures to regain operational capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, labor unrest in China was almost exclusively a blue-collar phenomenon. A critical modern transformation is the contagion of wage arrears into the public sector and middle class<\/strong>. Deepening local government debt crises have left municipalities entirely illiquid, leading to wage cuts and withheld benefits for public school teachers, healthcare workers, and state-owned enterprise employees. This has broken the unspoken social contract<\/strong> where state employment guaranteed absolute financial security (which is over for a long time, since SOEs are using entrepreneurial strategies similar to the private sector), pushing white-collar professionals into open protest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To survive the world\u2019s most sophisticated domestic surveillance apparatus, workers have fundamentally altered the scale and duration of their protests. Massive, multi-thousand-worker strikes have largely been replaced by hyper-localized “flash mobilizations” usually involving fewer than 100 people. Workers gather rapidly at a government building or corporate headquarters, document the grievance on social media to build brief leverage, and disperse before regional riot police can organize a mass containment operation of repression (which almost always end up happening, anyway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The closing of independent civil society organizations and domestic legal aid centers has forced workers into raw, unmediated confrontations with capital and the state. The abrupt dissolution of prominent grassroots tracking networks, combined with aggressive state crackdowns on labor lawyers, has eliminated the buffer of formal arbitration. Without trusted intermediaries to negotiate settlements, labor disputes escalate more rapidly into disruptive public actions, as workers feel the formal legal system is stacked entirely against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese government is concerned about preventing endemic issues such as unilateral wage cuts, layoffs without compensation, forced transfers to other provinces without remuneration, and company bankruptcies because of production relocations \u2014 events that could spark a new wave of social unrest in a context of protests across Asia, from Nepal to Indonesia and from Bangladesh to the Philippines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers in China are not as yet organized as a class, and have the extra burden of battling against one the most powerful and reactionary bureaucracies in the world. But things are shaking inside the country, facing its economic deceleration moment. Conscience is changing, and new forms of resistance arise. The Chinese working class is no longer willing to passively accept unilateral sacrifices. Striking is no longer viewed as an extreme and isolated gesture but rather as a legitimate means of resistance against attacks on workers\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The return of class struggle in China is likely to take new, nontraditional forms that reflect the modern class structure resulting from technological industrialization and incorporate the current youth and women\u2019s movements in China, where issues of oppression, precariousness, and inequality are central. While they must navigate the challenges posed by the absence of traditional institutions for independent organization, they benefit from new forms of connectivity and social regrouping. The very need for struggle might give rise to self-organizing institutions that operate outside the official trade union federation and resist the CCP\u2019s control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chinese working class is no longer willing to passively accept unilateral sacrifices. Strikes are back, and counting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"crp_sub_category":"","crp_read_time":"","crp_featured":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[102,3,51],"tags":[42,23,19],"coauthors":[77],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-east-asia","category-working-class-politics","tag-asia-pacific","tag-labor","tag-marxism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChina's Upsurging Strike Trend<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crpnews.com\/asia\/chinas-upsurging-strike-trend\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"China's Upsurging Strike Trend\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Chinese working class is no longer willing to passively accept unilateral sacrifices. 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