On Sunday, a woman who, along with her husband, are owed more than 70,000RMB in back pay, climbed a crane at a construction site in a desperate bid for attention to their plight. Though she finally agreed to come down after some negotiations, due to extended exposure to the cold and wind her appendages froze and she found herself unable to move. more ›

Henanese migrant workers staged a self-burial in protest of wages they were owed Tuesday in Zhengzhou, Henan province. more ›

Riots and clashes with police occurred in Chaozhou (潮州) in eastern Guangdong province on Monday night, after a migrant worker's son was injured in a knife attack over a wage dispute. 18 people were injured an 9 were detained following a protest that involving hundreds of migrant workers, reportedly from Sichuan province. more ›

• Shell to Delay Alternative Energy Projects in China [WSJ] "Royal Dutch Shell PLC is delaying or dropping some alternative energy projects in China as too costly given current low oil prices, executives said Tuesday... because of the economic downturn Shell decided to postpone a joint venture Shenhua Group, China's top coal producer to turn coal into liquid fuel. Shell had conducted a feasibility study with Shenhua, China's biggest coal producer, to build a coal-to-liquid plant in the country's western Ningxia Autonomous Region."
• Chinese workers protest again over unpaid wages [AP] "Hundreds of workers at a textile factory in southern China blocked roads Tuesday, in a second day of protests over unpaid wages, an employee said. The protests come as a collapse in demand for Chinese exports has closed factories and wiped out at least 20 million jobs. Communist leaders worry that more job losses and unpaid wages could result in mass protests."
• Rare Fungi Sent Back to China [Cornell Sun] "In the 1920s, Shu Chun Teng was China’s premier expert on fungi after studying mycology at Cornell. To preserve Teng’s specimens from destruction following the 1937 Japanese invasion of China, 2,278 of the specimen packets were smuggled by ox cart to Indochina and then by sea to the United States, eventually arriving at Cornell in 1940" It is now being returned to China. Hoorah!