ABSTRACT
On May 8, 2012, a thousand workers, about a third of those employed at a shoe factory in Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta in China, walked out on strike over management’s slashing of their performance bonus. Getting no response from the company, a young worker posted a photo to his weibo or microblogging page to generate public support and media attention. 1 Within an hour, the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin posted the story, which was then picked up by local labor activists and reporters, and retweeted more than 50 times. By the next day, after local government mediation, management agreed to restore more than half the bonus. 2
