The former Party boss of Shizong county in the south western province of Yunnan is being investigated for alleged corruption following the death of 43 miners in a massive gas explosion on 10 November 2011, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

With the traditional Lunar New Year holiday approaching, police across China have launched high-profile campaigns to crackdown on the malicious non-payment wages (恶意拖欠). An amendment to China’s Criminal Law early last year, which criminalized the non-payment of wages, has allowed police to detain factory bosses and labour contractors who flee owing large numbers of workers hundreds of thousands of yuan in unpaid wages.

A three day strike by several thousand workers at an automotive plant in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi has reportedly forced the provincial government to intervene and suspend plans to restructure the company.

The recent upsurge in worker activism in China is continuing into the New Year with five more strikes and protests in five different provinces getting media attention last week.

Amendments to China’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Occupational Diseases (职业病防治法), approved by the National People’s Congress on 31 December 2011, will go some way to ease the ordeal workers face in getting diagnosed and compensated for occupational disease, according to a leading labour rights activist.

The Beijing municipal government increased the capital’s minimum wage by 8.6 percent on 1 January this year, and the Shenzhen government has announced it will increase its minimum wage to 1,500 yuan a month on 1 February, making it once again the highest minimum wage in China.

A planned increase in Guangdong’s minimum wage of up to 20 percent, which was scheduled to go into effect on 1 January next year, has been put on hold, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper reported today.

Protests have erupted over the last week in a wide range of industries and locations across China, indicating that worker unrest is far from confined to just the manufacturing heartland of the Pearl River Delta.

Factory owners in China have for decades refused to hire production line workers under 30-years-of-age, but now such blatant age discrimination is spreading to the professional services as well.

Around 7,000 workers at a Taiwan-owned shoe factory in Dongguan took to the streets today, 17 November, in protest at salary cuts and the earlier dismissal of 18 managerial staff, according to posts on Tianya and a Southern Daily reporter’s microblog.