ASIA LETTER/Miriam O'Donohoe: Two hundred retired factory workers gathered outside a car plant in Beijing last Wednesday in a rare public protest in the capital.
They blocked traffic on a major city street for two hours, angry at the delay in issuing their pensions. On the same day 80 farmers from the AIDS-stricken village of Wenlou in Henan province marched to local government offices demanding medicine for local people.
Wenlou has been at the centre of a "blood for sale" scandal which has left 80 per cent of the population infected with AIDS.
In northeast China recently, thousands of laid-off workers have staged protests in the cities of Liaoyang and Daqing demanding back pay and compensation.
No mention of these protests has appeared in the Chinese media as the Communist Party does not publicise dissent.
China is facing a critical period after the shedding of millions of jobs as it streamlines loss-making state enterprises to prepare for competition, following entry to the World Trade Organisation.
People are beginning to let their grievances be known, whether it is demanding medicines for the sick, back pay for laid off workers, or voicing their anger at corruption, endemic among local government officials. Because of the news blackout on the recent labour unrest, it has been left to the Western media to publicise events. Many foreign journalists have been harassed by local police and some detained. At the car factory protest in Beijing I was ordered by a policeman to leave.
However, word is spreading, and groups with grievances in one part of the China draw encouragement from others in another part.
The recent protests are not large enough to cause serious problems for China's leaders. But the issues which sparked the protests - wages owed, pensions unpaid, corruption, lack of medicine for the ill - exist in most of the country's 32 provinces and autonomous regions. The bad news for the Communist Party is that the grievances are not going to go away. Already 40 million jobs have been shed and millions more redundancies are expected annually as China prepares for foreign competition .
Corruption among government officials is not being tackled, and the country's social security system is buckling under pressure.
The protests in the northeast are the biggest organised demonstrations seen in China since the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.
In Daqing some 50,000 laid-off workers have taken to the streets to protest at the loss of jobs without medical and social-security benefits, and about 30,000 people from 20 factories in Liaoyang have protested at unpaid salaries and pensions. Four workers' leaders have been arrested and are to be charged. The protests have, however, died down in the last week.The country's undeveloped social security system is also being ransacked by corrupt provincial officials.
Opinions differ about the prospect of labour unrest spreading and becoming a nationwide phenomenon. "The leaders aren't foolish enough to think that all this change can happen without some form of public protest but once thousands don't bring their grievances onto the streets of places like Beijing and Shanghai, and the dissent is confined to places that are off the beaten track, they won't worry unduly," said one seasoned observer.
However, the determined efforts of officialdom to restrict news coverage of the protests suggests a degree of nervousness.
Some changes for the better have happened since Tiananmen Square in 1989, but nothing has changed when it comes to freedom of speech and the right to protest.
China's new politburo, already "unofficially" chosen ahead of next year's leadership changes, will have plenty to do when they take over. They may find there is no choice but to open more than just the economy.