Thousands of temporary workers staged a mass protest outside the Pegatron factory in Shanghai on 19 December after managers at the Taiwan-owned electronics company ordered them to relocate to another facility in Kunshan.

For the first time in over a decade, none of China’s provinces and regions announced a minimum wage increase this year, and several regions implemented an official minimum wage freeze.

Twenty-three workers died of carbon monoxide poisoning on Friday, 4 December, after being sent into a disused coal mine in Chongqing to salvage old mining equipment. 

All coal mines in the southern city of Leiyang have suspended production after 13 miners were trapped in a flooded mine shaft at the Yuanjiangshan Coal Mine on 29 November.