Protests by unpaid Chinese workers spread amid factory closures

Workers demand back wages from companies impacted by steep U.S. tariffs and an economic slowdown in China.

Protests by workers demanding back wages are spreading across China in a sign of growing discontent among millions suffering the brunt of factory closures, triggered by steep U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports amid an economic downturn.

Across the country – from Hunan province’s Dao county in central China to Sichuan’s Suining city in the southwest and Inner Mongolia’s Tongliao city to the northeast – hundreds of disgruntled workers have taken to the streets to protest about unpaid wages and to challenge unfair dismissals by factories that were forced to shut due to the U.S. tariffs.

“Strike! Strike!” shouted workers outside a Shangda Electronics’ factory in Suining city on Sunday, in a video of the protest that was posted on social media by X user ‘@YesterdayBigcat,’ a prominent source of information about protests in China.

The workers said the Sichuan-headquartered company, which manufactures flexible circuit boards, had not paid them wages since the start of the year and social security benefits for nearly two years – since June 2023.

Analysts at U.S.-based investment bank Goldman Sachs estimated that at least 16 million jobs, across industries, in China are at risk due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 145% tariff on Chinese imports.

They expect the Trump administration’s tariff increases will “significantly weigh on the Chinese economy,” with slower economic growth likely to put further pressure on the country’s labor market, particularly in export-related sectors.

As President Xi Jinping traveled the world, police swept peaceful protesters off the streets

In country after country, local authorities detained and silenced activists to shield the Chinese leader from dissent.

Pohan Wu, a Taiwanese exchange student in Paris, stood behind barricades on Boulevard Saint-Germain, his eyes trained on the road where Chinese President Xi Jinping’s motorcade would soon pass. It was March 26, 2019, and Xi was in the French capital to discuss trade with European leaders.

Pohan Wu shouts “Taiwan independence. No to ‘one country, two systems,’ “ in Chinese as a French National Gendarmerie officer attempts to subdue him in Paris on March 26, 2019.

Armed with a teal cloth sign that read, “I am Taiwanese. I stand for Taiwan’s independence,” Wu planned to protest Beijing’s policy that asserts Taiwan is part of China. He waited patiently until he saw the president’s custom Hongqi, a luxury Chinese car, and unfolded his banner. Within seconds, a French military officer grabbed Wu and stripped him of the sign. In a video he posted online, Wu can be heard shouting “Taiwan independence” in Chinese as the officer attempts to subdue him.

“They didn’t give me any warning,” Wu told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. “They just tried to rip off my flag.”

French police held Wu in a van while Xi’s motorcade passed, he said, releasing him after more than an hour. According to Wu, officers told him that people in France can normally protest freely but they had been given orders from “high-level officials” to prevent any demonstrations that day.

France’s Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the French Gendarmerie, a branch of the armed forces, did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the incident.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-targets/xi-jinping-protest-diplomatic-police-activists-dissent/

The Tariff War Ignites China’s Social Pressure Cooker, Mass Strikes and Protests Sweep China

“Pay my wages! Pay my wages!” Workers at Shengdi Optoelectronics in Wuzhen, Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province, are shouting in unison, demanding the company pay their overdue wages.
The workers went on strike starting April 28 due to the company’s long-standing failure to pay wages. The next day, they gathered in front of the Wuzhen Town government to protest, continuing to pressure for the wages they’ve been owed since January. However, the police arrested several protesters on the spo

https://youtu.be/vjKhZu4eenA?si=4a5W1iwkEPQBF2fR

Two years ago, I met a retired Australian equivalent of an FBI agent at a historical wargaming convention. He had just been in China teaching crowd containment techniques to minimize use of force. I asked him what China was like. He said that inside China their was an antigovernment groundswell and that China would implode at some point in the future. Unemployment and lack of decent paying jobs was causing underground resentment to rise up. The Chinese govt. is scared of the people. Internet allows all sorts of problems to be shared. God Bless ARPA for making a system that is autonomous and connection seeking. Arise workers and throw off your shackles, to quote some marxist hack.

China: a very large, very sore zit on the verge of popping.

From a FoxNews article this morning:

"Under the guise of reciprocity and fairness, the U.S. is playing a zero-sum game, which is essentially about subverting the existing international economic and trade order by means of tariffs, putting U.S. interests above the common good of the international community and advancing hegemonic ambitions of the U.S. at the cost of the legitimate interest of all countries," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Fu Cong said in his opening remarks.

A. Americans are not interested in international communism but in American interests; and

B. Projection much, China?

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”
“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Trump is waging war on China using non military means, tariffs. He is attempting to take down Xi and the CCP without military conflict, by letting the Chinese people overthrow Xi. Let's hope he succeeds!

FR's Lone Palm has a series of excellent "Broken China" articles of which post 4969 this is one:

Lone Palm's Broken China ping.

Some additional comments relevant to the situation.

Lone Palm on China situation

Thanks L.P.!

Communist China has been successfully waging war on the United States for decades now, and it is only since Trump took office in 2016 that people outside of a small cultural enclave in this country began to realize it.

I have read two specific books on this that finally made me understand just exactly what Communist China is up to: Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept by Gen. Robert Spalding (Ret.) and Unrestricted Warfare co-written by two Colonels in the People's Liberation Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui.

General Spalding's book was eminently readable, though a bit gut wrenching. But he absolutely knew of what he wrote. (General Spalding was relieved of his post in the NSC because of his strident, unrepentant, and finally, public warnings about allowing Communist China to design and build 5G networks in the USA. His open statement to the press was what got him fired.)

I had far more difficulty reading Unrestricted Warfare, but what impressed me about that was how they weren't even trying to hide their goals in it. I didn't enjoy reading it, as it was not very approachable, but the message was unmistakeable.

They clearly believe they can bring our country down via non-kinetic warfare. Further, I got the unmistakeable impression that they discouraged the approach of building up their military as the Soviet Union did to challenge us, but instead were advocating that they build just enough to make the world believe they were following the path of the Soviet Union in order to make us build ourselves up and bankrupt ourselves, as the Soviet Union did.

Granted, that book was written back in 1999 and things have changed.

I believe that the risk involved in this trade war is fully and absolutely balanced by the fact that the CCP has had the upper hand as long as the West in general, and America in particular, are not wholly cognizant of the power the Communist China wields.

It is my opinion the someone got Trump's ear, and convinced him (rightfully and accurately) that the greatest weapon American wields over Communist China (and the rest of the hostile world) is our consumer market, hundreds of millions of Americans who control the purse strings that allow money to flow into the ChiCom coffers.

The Communists knew this, and understood that like Satan, the best defense against us defending our interests was to make Americans believe the threat did not exist. And that concealment is gone.

They know it. Trump knows it. and now, many Americans understand it too.

Again. Calling them out on what they have deliberately planned and carried out in a most effective manner is not without risk. They are a simmering pot internally. If you really want to know about China, I believe this person who has a channel on YouTube (he goes by the nickname of LINK: Serpentza) and he had lived in Communist China as an English teacher for 15 years. He knows the country pretty intimately.

The CCP has created an internal monster they have to keep going, or that monster is going to come after them. And they know it.

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