A dangerous year

摘要

In an industrial zone near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwest China, a sign colourfully proclaims the sprawl of factories to be a "delightful, harmonious and happy district". Angry steelworkers must have winced as they marched past the slogan in their thou-. sands in early January, demanding higher wages. Their three-day strike was unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government. But, as China's economy begins to grow more sedately, more such unrest is looming.