By Kwangmin Ahn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

GUANGDONG, CHINA – China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has called for better living conditions for migrant workers from rural areas. He said China owed them its wealth and tall buildings, and officials should treat them as their own children. The comments follow a wave of strikes and labour-related suicides.

The speech was a familiar one for the premier, known as “Grandpa Wen” for his ability to display empathy on behalf of the country’s struggling masses. But it was also the first public intervention by the leadership since strikes and other incidents at some of the country’s most modern factories focused global attention on an agitated younger generation of workers.

At the same time, the ruling communist party maintained a reporting ban on the third in a series of strikes in southern Guangdong province that have affected the China operations of Honda, the Japanese carmaker. The latest strike at a Honda lock factory in Zhongshan began on June 9 and has reached an uneasy stalemate.

After refusing to enter plant grounds for four days, workers returned to their posts on Monday pending another management response, expected on Friday, to demands for a 70 percent wage increase to $230 a month.

Up to 200 million Chinese workers have migrated from the countryside to the cities in recent years and the labour disputes at factories in the Chinese industrial belt have raised fears that migrant workers are becoming restless about tough working conditions and curbs on pay.

Strikes are illegal in China but the government seems to be tolerating the recent walkouts at Honda suppliers and other firms, as long as the disputes are settled quickly and quietly

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – China’s changing work landscape – 09 June 2010

CNN –China attempts to soothe worker unrest– 16 June 2010

BBC – China PM praises migrants but makes no promises on pay– 15 June 2010

NYTIMES – New strike threat at a Chinese Honda parts plant– 14 June 2010