At the beginning of this decade, a series of labour protests broke out at the high profile factories of multinationals such as Foxconn, Honda and Flextronics in Guangdong, China’s powerhouse of a province just across the border from Hong Kong. The powerful party secretary then was named Wang Yang. He took a gamble and, in consultation with Beijing, mandated double-digit raises for workers for the next five years, including pay hikes of 20 per cent that year itself. Instead of sanctioning Communist Party-led disciplining and beatings at the first sign of worker protests as is paradoxically the norm in other
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