Hundreds of steelworkers blocked a national highway in Fujian province on the afternoon of July 25, defying police and riot units until the early hours of the following morning. The protest erupted after their employer announced that production would be suspended for a plant retrofit and workers’ monthly pay would be cut to 1,000 yuan, or about US$140.
Fujian Yixin Steel sits in Luoyuan county, on the northern edge of the provincial capital, Fuzhou. It employed 1,276 people in 2024. Video of the blockade was posted by the X account @YesterdayBigcat, which tracks collective protests on the mainland. Such footage is typically removed from Chinese platforms within hours, and no other visual record of the night has emerged.
Workers said they were told they would take turns reporting for duty while receiving just 1,000 yuan a month. They viewed the arrangement as a layoff in all but name, designed to avoid paying severance. Under Article 47 of China’s Labor Contract Law, employees are generally entitled to one month’s wages for each year of service.
According to Fujian’s minimum wage schedule, in force since April 2025, Luoyuan county sits at 2,195 yuan a month. A provincial rule issued in 2020 and still current requires an employer whose stoppage runs beyond one pay cycle, and who assigns no work, to pay a living allowance of at least 70 percent of that, or 1,536.50 yuan (about US$215). Where work is assigned, ordinary wage rules apply instead.
On Feb. 12, Fujian’s industry department published a list of steelmaking equipment subject to restrictions. Yixin’s two 450-cubic-metre blast furnaces and two 45-tonne converters were included, making it one of three Fujian steelmakers named. Companies on the list must pay above-standard electricity rates until all designated equipment has been dismantled.
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The mill also changed hands. Corporate registry records reported by Sina Finance and by Minshang Net, both citing the national enterprise credit information system, show that sixteen individual shareholders left Fujian Yixin Steel in June. Fujian Wugang Group, a steel group based in Changle, took 76.51 percent, and control passed to its head, Chen Faguan.
Workers said in the video that the company had changed its legal representative the previous month, with incoming management describing the move as purely administrative. Because changes to a company’s shareholders and legal representative are registered separately, Vision Times could not verify whether ownership had also changed.
The company withdrew the shutdown and retrofit notice shortly after midnight, agreed to make up unpaid medical and pension contributions, and said a compensation plan would follow by Friday, July 31. The road cleared over the next few hours.
Chongqing staff of a failed lending platform protested on an office roof
The Juxiaohua app, operated by Juzi Digital Technology, went offline in late June, while its customer service lines stopped responding. More than 1,000 complaints were subsequently filed on the Heimao consumer platform. On June 29, police in Yingkou, Liaoning province, opened an investigation into the company’s handling of customer funds—a case industry observers described as the first of its kind in the lending sector. Party-run media reported the investigation on July 2.
From July 12 the company published closure and redundancy plans office by office. Beijing and Shanghai staff were offered half the statutory severance. Staff in Dalian, Anshan, Jinan, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Changsha were offered half of one month’s base salary, which came to a little over 1,000 yuan each.
Employees in the second group of cities were told their unpaid June and July wages would be paid on Aug. 15. Staff in Beijing and Shanghai, however, were informed that payment would depend on how much money the company could recover. Those who accepted the reduced severance package were told it would be paid in installments in October and November.
On July 13, employees at the company’s Chongqing branch climbed onto the roof of an office tower near the city’s north railway station, chanting demands for the company to pay the wages it owed.
Hefei residents blocked a ring road and the district cancelled a waste plant
Hefei’s planning bureau published a siting notice in June for a waste transfer station of about 4.23 hectares at the junction of the North Second Ring Road and the Banqiao River, in Luyang district. It was designed to handle 1,500 tonnes of household waste and 550 tonnes of construction debris a day.
Three primary schools and close to 20 residential compounds sit within a kilometer of the plot, along with about 100,000 residents. They said the station would bring odor and heavy truck traffic past school gates.
A hundred or so people gathered near the north gate of the Haotianyuan compound on the evening of June 27, and the crowd passed a thousand. They blocked the road, then sat down in it, stopping traffic on the North Second Ring for at least two hours. Police formed a line and there were scuffles.
Late that night the head of Luyang district, Yang Binghong, arrived with a megaphone. “I solemnly announce that the project you are concerned about has now been canceled,” he told the crowd.
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