IT’S SHAPING up to be a summer of discontent in China as strikes take their toll on output.
Production was stopped at Toyoda Gosei, a parts supplier for Japanese carmaker Toyota in Tianjin – the second strike to hit the company this week.
Meanwhile, at the troubled Honda plant in the southern industrial province of Guangdong, further strike action looked possible as agreement had yet to be found on a pay deal.
In Chongqing city, workers at the local brewery staged a strike which reportedly ended yesterday, according to the Danish brewer Carlsberg, which part owns it.
A series of suicides at the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, southern China, forced the management to double wages to stave off even more bad publicity which would have affected the plant’s fortunes.
For decades, the country’s army of tens of millions of migrant workers, by some estimates nearly 10 per cent of the total population, have formed the backbone of China’s economic strength. But prices are rising, and this is causing grumblings of discontent. Workers are looking around at the rising wealth of the ruling classes and saying they want a piece.
Many of these migrant workers are young farmers, who want to work in the city for a couple of years to earn enough money to buy a house and get married. But property prices are rising, and it’s getting harder for them to live their dreams.
“Yes, China has developed super-fast. But many people still have to worry about so many things – healthcare, children’s education and employment,” said one telecoms company employee, Xin Junjie.
“I feel pity for our country’s workers. They are good and hard-working people. But money is nowadays the means by which they measure success in China. Our workers suffer the most from our socially unfair ‘fortune’ distribution. To strike means they feel they have no way out.”
China is wrestling with the implications of rising wages. The country’s new prosperity is built on cheap labour, and the transition to the next stage of development could prove destabilising.
This disruptive effect is one of the reasons why reporting on the strikes in the Chinese media has been kept to a minimum, although there has been reporting on the impact of rising wages, including an editorial in the People's Daily, the main government organ.
“The challenge is to preserve the advantages of cheap labour and at the same time keep the delicate balance between corporate profits and social harmony. Developing countries need to preserve this balance more than developed countries, and their problems are more complicated,” it said.