In an email reportedly sent to Apple's 60,000 or so employees, Tim Cook, the company's chief executive said that Apple "cares about every worker in its supply chain". The letter appears to be in response to a series of articles in the New York Times cataloguing the company's problems in China and divisions within Apple about how to handle the issues.

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.

Foxconn Technology Group (FOXCGZ), maker of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and parts for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox game console, said 150 workers at a southern China factory protested against a plan to transfer them to another business unit.

Word today out of China that 150 workers at a factory that makes iPhones all threatened to jump from the top of the building if they didn't get a raise. Those workers at the Foxconn plant did get a raise. It's the same company that got a lot of press over the past few years for a rash of suicides there among workers, but these aren't the only workers protesting work conditions and pay in the country.

Around nine million students graduate each year from China’s vocational schools and colleges. They hope for a decent job with good prospects but all too often end up working on the factory production line. Even before they graduate, students are routinely exploited when deployed, for up to one year of their studies, as interns

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.

The detention of two Indians by Chinese businessmen has shed light on the tough, uncompromising and often lawless business environment in which foreign enterprises, lured by lucrative profits, operate in some southern Chinese trading towns.

Shenzhen's minimum wage will rise from next month, ending a one-month delay to the increase rather than a year-long grace period that angry Hong Kong manufacturers had asked the municipal authorities for in December.

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.