On September 1, bus drivers in Xingning, Guangdong went on strike to protest the government’s delay in subsidy payments. The striking drivers said that because the government has long withheld subsidies for free ride cards, their income is not even enough to cover fuel, insurance, repair costs, and other expenses. As a result, they have been running at a loss for a long time and their livelihoods have fallen into hardship.
This year, the No. 22 Middle School in Mudan District, Heze, Shandong, enrolled 100 classes of seventh graders (some say 94), resulting in a shortage of classrooms. As a result, over a thousand eighth-grade students from the school’s Fourth Division were moved to attend classes in a kindergarten with excessive formaldehyde levels. This sparked parents’ discontent, leading them to protest at the school for two consecutive days, August 29 and 30.
On August 31, San Zhi Yang Middle School in Du’an County, Guangxi, colluded with China Mobile to forcibly require students to use a facial recognition payment system in the cafeteria, charging a fee of 120 yuan. This sparked dissatisfaction among students and parents, who gathered in protest. Under pressure, the principal publicly announced that students would be guaranteed supper that day and that the collected fees would be refunded.
Translation: On Friday (August 29), thousands of laid-off private, substitute, and kindergarten teachers gathered at the Shanxi Provincial Department of Education, demanding that the authorities make retroactive social security contributions for them and grant them the same benefits as active teachers.
On August 28, as the new school term was approaching, construction workers who could not afford to pay their children’s tuition blocked the entrance of Fucangcheng Ziyuefu in Kunming, Yunnan.
On August 29, Liu Mingyao, the victim of the “wife-killing case” in Mengcun, Hebei, was laid to rest. Although the authorities deployed a large number of plainclothes officers to guard the site in the early hours of the day, thousands of netizens still came to bid her farewell. Those who tried to take photos at the scene were stopped by the plainclothes officers, and the few videos uploaded online were quickly removed.
Zhuhai Qisi Intelligent Manufacturing Co., Ltd. in Guangdong relocated its factory to Dongguan. In order to evade compensation, the company announced a three-month shutdown. On August 28 and 29, workers staged protests for two consecutive days to stop the company from moving out equipment. On the 29th, company security guards carried a female worker—who had come to demand her maternity pay—out of the factory.
Fujian Nanping New Vision Eye Hospital lured an 85-year-old woman to the hospital with the promise of a free check-up. However, not only was the check-up charged, but the hospital also deceived her by claiming she had cataracts and needed surgery, even grabbing her hand to force a signature. When her family went to the hospital (on August 21 and 28) to request a detailed bill, the hospital refused to provide it.
[Workers at Jiangsu Guanyun Electronics Protest Boss’s Disguised Layoffs to Avoid Social Insurance]
On August 27, the Yilu branch of Minghao Electronics Factory in Guanyun County, Jiangsu, announced another two-month suspension of work without any allowances, after already being shut down for two months. According to workers, Minghao Electronics has three branches. In two of them, the boss pays workers’ social insurance, but at the Yilu branch—located in a rural area where employees are older and earn just over 1,000 yuan per month—no social insurance has ever been provided. Recently, after the labor bureau required the boss to purchase social insurance for these workers, he declared a further shutdown, in an apparent attempt to evade his social insurance obligations and compensation responsibilities, thereby pressuring workers to resign voluntarily. Workers had requested a few hundred yuan in monthly subsidies, but were refused. They then appealed to the county government, which took no action.
