Wage Strikes Surge in China Amid Mounting Economic Pressures

Name: Wage Strikes Surge in China Amid Mounting Economic Pressures
Uploaded: 2025-05-24T10:48:21.000Z
Description: The number of protests in China has risen sharply in recent weeks. In particular, protests by furious workers who say they haven't been paid for months—or even longer.

The number of protests in China has risen sharply in recent weeks. In particular, protests by furious workers who say they haven't been paid for months—or even longer.

Mary Hong

Published: 5/9/2025, 11:57:40 PM EDT

As the U.S.–China trade war persists and the Chinese economy continues to slow, protests over unpaid wages and labor strikes across China highlight mounting economic pressure and growing social unrest.

Social media accounts in China posted videos in recent weeks showing workers across the country demanding unpaid wages, with the disputes escalating into larger protests.

On April 28, a large-scale workers’ protest broke out in Wuzhen, eastern China, over wages that have been reportedly unpaid since January. Employees at Sengled Optoelectronics say the company has failed to pay their wages for three consecutive months, which prompted protesters to march to the local town hall to demand a resolution on April 29.

A Sengled employee confirmed the protest in a telephone interview with The Epoch Times on April 30. “Over a thousand of us went to the town hall to protest,” the worker said. “Employees’ wages haven’t been paid for half a year.”

“Over a dozen people were arrested,” he said. "The company owes wages to over 1,000 full-time workers. We are all entitled to full benefits—pensions, retirement funds, unemployment insurance. The amount they owe is huge, but they haven’t given us any explanation."

The worker said that the factory owner owes the government a great deal of money and the “factory should’ve shut down long ago.”

On May 2, Radio Free Asia also reported that a former worker, Mr. Feng, stated that Sengled, a major local employer, began delaying wages six months ago. Despite the delays, workers continued on the job as orders kept coming in. He said the company abruptly shut down a few days earlier and refused to pay outstanding wages, prompting the workers to protest.

“I’m also a victim,” Mr. Feng said. “We don’t know when we’ll get paid,” reported RFA.

In addition to Sengled, recent uploads to the Chinese YouTube channel “Yesterday” and to post on X reveal a surge of videos showing workers across China demanding back pay around the Labor Day holiday.

In south central China, hundreds of workers at Guangxin Sporting Goods in Daoxian County, Hunan Province, went on strike to protest the factory’s closure—without worker compensation—on April 24.

Employees accused the company of failing to pay social insurance for an extended period, and of laying off more than 100 female workers over the age of 50 under the pretext of their reaching retirement age. The workers say the redundancies occurred without the company offering severance pay or assistance with retirement procedures since September 2024.

Last year, China announced a phased plan to address population aging by gradually raising the statutory retirement age over 15 years starting Jan. 1, 2025, from 60 to 63 for men, from 55 to 58 for women, and from 50 to 55 for female blue-collar workers.

In western China, workers at Leader-Tech Electronics in Suining, Sichuan, went on strike on April 27 to protest long-overdue wages and unpaid social insurance. The company has reportedly not paid its share of social security contributions since June 2023 and has failed to pay employee wages this year. This is not the first instance of delayed payments, and by the end of April, workers had still not received their pay.

In addition, wage disputes have erupted in the construction industry. In Chongqing, workers at the 2077 Cyber City project protested unpaid wages on April 26 and 27. In Xi'an, a dozen workers at a Tuanjie Village site rallied on April 28, demanding pay for wages that are overdue since February. Meanwhile, in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia, workers at the Jincan Yuyuan complex took extreme action by gathering on rooftops, threatening to jump unless they were paid.

Beijing Facing Multiple Challenges Amid US–China Tariff War

While China’s economy faces mounting internal pressures, the escalating U.S.-China trade war is further intensifying the challenges faced by Chinese businesses and workers alike.

In a recent report, Goldman Sachs indicated that the tariff spike on April 9, which raised U.S. duties on Chinese goods to 125 percent, is “poised to hammer China's GDP and jeopardize up to 20 million export-linked jobs.”

On April 25, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping led a meeting addressing “Four Stabilities” that needed to be secured amid rising external pressures: jobs, businesses, markets, and public confidence.

Professor Sun Kuo-hsiang, at Nanhua University’s Department of International Affairs and Business in Chiayi, Taiwan, told The Epoch Times that the meeting emphasized two key themes: “maintaining stability” and “struggle.”

Stability centers on maintaining the current domestic socioeconomic order and Communist Party control, while the latter reflects an ongoing narrative of “great power competition” in foreign affairs.

Sun said he questions the effectiveness of the CCP’s continued reliance on tightening ideological control and guiding public opinion to achieve short-term socioeconomic stability.

He noted that while China’s underlying socioeconomic issues remain unresolved, the CCP’s heavy-handed controls are creating unintended side effects. With weak consumer spending, high youth unemployment, and escalating local debt risks, economic pressure on the regime continues to intensify, with public confidence reaching new lows.

Jing Li and Xiaohua Gu contributed to this report.