China: Strikes in Dongguan test new labor law

Konica Minolta Business Technologies and Sankyo Seiko Science & Technology are two neighboring factories in Shilong township, Dongguan.
Strikes began Thursday in the Sankyo plant after a pay dispute involving some 3,000 workers who complained their salaries were too low because the overtime pay they were getting didn’t comply with China’s Labor Contract Law. One worker [...]

South China Villagers Slam Pollution From Rare Earth Mine

Guangdong. We all love Guangdong. The shopping. The tourism. The factories. The people. The Guangzhou zoo. The…rare-earth minerals? This week, we learn through RFA’s Cantonese service, Guangdong villagers are fighting an illegal rare-earth mine in their neighborhood which they say has poisoned the local water supply and wiped out their fish-farm stock and rice crops. [...]

Guangdong: Nine detained in Huizhou land clash

On the afternoon of Monday Jan 14, in the village of Qingtang, Gezhou township, Huicheng district, Huizhou city, Guangdong province:
Around 200 people went to the township government office to protest and call for the release of two villagers who had been detained by police.
A villager surnamed Lam was at the scene, and told RFA’s Cantonese [...]

China’s Pearl River Delta: 40,000 fingers lost annually, 1,000 workers strike daily

Han Dongfang, labour activist-turned-expert (and former Lamma resident), who hosts RFA’s Mandarin service programme, Labor Bulletin(ZH),  says the Pearl River Delta, China’s industrial powerhouse, sees at least one major labour dispute daily. By ‘major’, he means involving at least 1,000 people.
“My figure, unofficially, shows that strikes involving over 1,000 workers happens at least once a [...]

China: Riot at Maersk factory near Dongguan

“It is total chaos here. We don’t even know where to start,” a member of the administrative staff at Maersk Container Industri in the port of Machong, near Dongguan city.
“There are lots of broken windows. Wherever there was a piece of glass, it has now been broken,” he told RFA’s Cantonese service (ZH).
RFA’s Cantonese service [...]

Cantonese: Video of clashes in Baima village land dispute

Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan have dispatched several hundred riot police to Baima village, where a land dispute has flared into clashes with local residents.

China: Three reporters missing in Guangdong land protest

From RFA’s Mandarin service: In Heping county, Guangdong province, three reporters whose video equipment carried the China Central Television (CCTV) logo are missing after they interviewed local villagers about how tens of thousands of mu of farmland had been expropriated for commercial use.
On December 26, after the three wrapped up their interviews with the villagers, [...]

Cantonese: Land protest in Dongguan

A villager from Baima village, Dongguan city, Guangdong province said the local authorities used the excuse of building a university to buy their land at a very low price—8,000 yuan per mu. But later the villagers found out the local authorities resold the land to a third party at a price ten times higher than [...]

Thousands protest over wages in Guangdong

Thousands of workers at a Hong Kong-invested AV equipment factory in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong blocked the streets with a sit-in outside their workplace Tuesday. They said they were protesting wage deductions. Several thousand workers at the Aigao Electronics Co. in Houjie township staged a sit-in in the main streets near the factory, in the suburbs of Dongguan city. They told RFA’s Cantonese service that the sit-in occurred on a major street near the factory, snarling traffic and prompting a heavy police turnout.