Recently, there have been a number of labor protests in China, something rarely seen since the Chinese Communist Party took power. These protests were sparked initially by conditions at the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, which led to a spate of suicides and resulted in the company promising to increase wages by 122 percent.
This was predictably followed by demands from other workers’ groups for pay increases and, with tacit official approval, the minimum wage was raised. These changes are moving beyond the relatively wealthy areas of the Pearl River Delta manufacturing region and around Shanghai, further inland to regions such as Jiangxi and Shanxi provinces. If the trend continues, it could spread throughout the country. Although this is an internal matter for China, it also represents a huge opportunity for Taiwan.
