China's spreading labor unrest is rightfully portrayed in the Western press as an immense challenge to that country's status as the "world's factory floor." But to Beijing's bosses, it's likewise a tool for addressing rising income inequality, which is why the Communist Party has remained most reticent to address it head on. Such a hands-off approach carries additional dangers, however, the most prominent being that, once emerging labor activists get a taste for pressing their collective demands, China's political leaders could find themselves riding a Solidarnosc-like trade-union tiger that's not easily tamed.
China has long suffered isolated sparks of labor unrest, but usually in smaller factories where media blackouts were easier to enforce and where local cops could more easily break up protests. The strikes also tended to revolve around Dickensian work conditions. What's new this year is that workers are striking at better-run, foreign-owned factories along the highly industrialized coast, meaning the focus is shifting to wages. While local media coverage remains muzzled, foreign coverage has been extensive, allowing increasingly networked laborers to compare notes over cell phones and instant-messaging services. Such connectivity has given rise to copycat strikes, a super-empowering phenomenon that signals the growing irrelevancy of China's single official trade union. ...