IN AN industrial zone near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in south-west China, a sign colourfully proclaims the sprawl of factories to be a “delightful, harmonious and happy district”. Angry steelworkers must have winced as they marched past the slogan in their thousands in early January, demanding higher wages. Their three-day strike was unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government. But, as China’s economy begins to grow more sedately, more such unrest is looming.

La población urbana es por primera vez mayor que la rural en China, un cambio histórico que tendrá grandes consecuencias sobre la fuerza laboral en la llamada fábrica del mundo y someterá a una fuerte presión a los servicios sociales, el transporte y el medio ambiente en las ciudades, según los expertos. En 1949, cuando Mao Zedong proclamó la República Popular China tras vencer a los nacionalistas de Chiang Kai-shek gracias al apoyo de las masas agrarias, el 89% de la gente vivía en el campo. En los 30 años que siguieron, esta cifra solo bajó ocho puntos y se situó en el 81%.

China Labour Bulletin Director Han Dongfang is quoted in this half-hour radio documentary on migrant workers in Guangdong, produced and presented by Mukul Devichand for the BBC.

Thousands of people from a southern Chinese village protested on Wednesday against the death in police custody of a popular local leader following a standoff over land acquisition and allegations of corruption.

China's economic planners face several headaches: bursting credit bubbles, slumping housing sales and poor outlooks in exports markets such as the U.S. and Europe. To that list add another concern, the return of labor unrest in manufacturing regions in south China. Factory workers have launched a series of strikes in recent weeks. While the labor actions have yet to cause widespread unrest, they are the most significant since workers at several foreign-owned plants went on strike in the summer of 2010.

China's manufacturing heartland has been hit by large-scale strikes in recent weeks, as an increasingly demanding workforce faces off with employers struggling with high costs and falling exports.

China's recent economic downturn is spurring a new wave of worker strikes, which experts say are the only effective channel for them to air their grievances.

China is facing its worst wave of labour unrest since a series of wildcat strikes at Japanese-owned car plants last year, as declining export orders force factories to reduce worker pay.

Thousands of workers have returned to work at a shoe factory in the southern Chinese industrial city of Dongguan, amid allegations of police brutality to quell their protests on Thursday.

Factories in China’s manufacturing heartland are feeling the squeeze again, with minimum wages in Guangdong province set to rise by as much as 20 percent on Jan. 1 for the second time in less than a year.