{"id":78420,"date":"2010-06-13T19:48:25","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T02:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=78420"},"modified":"2010-06-13T19:48:25","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T02:48:25","slug":"in-china-unlikely-labor-leader-just-wanted-a-middle-class-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2010\/06\/in-china-unlikely-labor-leader-just-wanted-a-middle-class-life\/","title":{"rendered":"In China, Unlikely Labor Leader Just Wanted a Middle-Class Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/14\/business\/global\/14honda.html\">the New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nTan Guocheng is hardly a self-styled labor leader. Age 23 and introverted, he grew up among rice paddies and orange groves far from China\u2019s big factory towns.<\/p>\n<p>But last month, an hour into his shift at a Honda factory in the southern city of Foshan, Mr. Tan pressed an emergency button that shut down his production line.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s go out on strike!\u201d he shouted. Within minutes, hundreds of workers were abandoning their posts.<\/p>\n<p>Colleagues described Mr. Tan\u2019s leadership as an uncharacteristic act of courage; Mr. Tan said he simply wanted a pay raise. Regardless, he has helped touch off a wave of strikes at Honda plants and other workplaces in China that are still playing out in surprising and significant ways. <\/p>\n<p>Though Mr. Tan has since been fired by Honda for \u201csabotage\u201d and moved back to his village, striking workers at another Honda plant less than 100 miles away in Zhongshan marched in the streets on Friday and made a new demand: the right to form an independent labor union.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>See also an online debate  from the New York Times titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/06\/13\/what-do-chinas-workers-want\/\">What Do China\u2019s Workers Want?<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read more about <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/china\/strikes\">labor strikes<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/china\/honda\">Honda<\/a> via CDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the New York Times: Tan Guocheng is hardly a self-styled labor leader. Age 23 and introverted, he grew up among rice paddies and orange groves far from China\u2019s big factory towns. But last month, an hour into his shift at a Honda factory in the southern city of Foshan, Mr. Tan pressed an emergency [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,100,5,38,1051],"tags":[5213,480,481],"class_list":["post-78420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-politics","category-society","category-the-great-divide","category-top-article","tag-honda","tag-labor-unrest","tag-strikes","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.1 (Yoast SEO v24.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In China, Unlikely Labor Leader Just Wanted a Middle-Class Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2010\/06\/in-china-unlikely-labor-leader-just-wanted-a-middle-class-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In China, Unlikely Labor Leader Just Wanted a Middle-Class Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the New York Times: Tan Guocheng is hardly a self-styled labor leader. Age 23 and introverted, he grew up among rice paddies and orange groves far from China\u2019s big factory towns. But last month, an hour into his shift at a Honda factory in the southern city of Foshan, Mr. Tan pressed an emergency [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2010\/06\/in-china-unlikely-labor-leader-just-wanted-a-middle-class-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"China Digital Times (CDT)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ChinaDigitalTimes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-14T02:48:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/CDT-logo.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"186\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"177\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sophie Beach\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" 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