Since May, a number of factories in China have been hit by strikes and other forms of labor disputes, and an end seems to be nowhere in sight. Most of the plants targeted by the strikers are subsidiaries of overseas corporations. Especially hard hit have been the subsidiaries of Japanese companies, including two automakers — Toyota and Honda.
Law enforcement authorities are no longer suppressing the strikers as they did in the past at the request of management. Instead, they are taking a wait-and-see attitude, apparently because the general public overwhelmingly supports the workers' demands for pay hikes and because the central government appears to have given tacit approval of the strikes.
Not only have these labor disputes played havoc with major manufacturing facilities in many parts of the country, they have also brought to the fore a serious dispute within the Chinese Communist Party as to how to reconcile workers' demands for higher wages with the need to maintain high economic growth — before the party's 18th National Congress convenes within two years.