"All they want to do is milk us of all our resources, earn money from our work and then leave nothing for us at all." Pictures and videos of striking workers at factories around China are uploaded within minutes, prompting executives to privately question if this was proving a catalyst for copycat industrial action
Strike organizers also frequently use these forums to pass on information about the strikes and update workers on any communication with the company's management.
Mobile phone text messages have also helped striking workers at the Honda and Toyota supplier plants coordinate and mobilise.
The Chinese government's seemingly tolerant attitude toward such online chatter has also surprised some businesses accustomed to a harder line toward industrial actions. In the late 1990s and early 2000s China was beset by a wave of worker protests during the mass privatization of rusting state-owned enterprises that led to tens of millions of workers getting laid off.
Fearful of broader social conflicts erupting at the time, authorities arrested and punished many worker leaders.
"It was never like this before," said a senior official at a Taiwanese firm that runs three factories in China, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"One of the biggest reasons why China has always been so attractive is because these issues have never come out in the open. Everyone wants a better life, but if we can't afford to raise salaries, what do they expect us to do?"
Political challenge
The emergence of a more assertive, confident young worker army could herald changes to China's industrial and political landscape.
Chinese leaders have said they want to give workers and farmers enough income and confidence to buy stuff, expanding domestic consumption in the process.
They have already lifted the minimum wage in industrial regions such as Guangdong and Jiangsu by about 20 percent, in line with a forecast from UBS that says average wages in China should rise by about 15-20 percent this year.
"Rural migrant workers are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce," China's Premier Wen Jiabao recently told a group of workers. "Your labor is a glorious thing, and it should be respected by society."
But the Communist Party, which traces its own heritage to a worker's movement, has faced a policy tightrope. It must also ensure that strikes don't proliferate and scare investors or ignite broader political confrontation that erodes Party rule.
Few workers blame the government for low wages, but more and more say higher pay and a larger share of China's economic pie are only fair.
While the past few years have seen bargaining power shift in labor's favor, it's virtually unthinkable that Beijing would allow workers to form independent unions along the lines of those found in Japan or South Korea, which might undermine its one-party power.
When workers of struggling state-owned factories in northeast China organized protests and voiced political demands in 2002, authorities arrested the leaders and jailed them on charges of political subversion.
China's leaders have studied the lessons from Poland's solidarity movement led by Lech Walesa, which saw an independent trade union morph into a powerful opposition force that played a key role in the downfall of Communism there and in other Eastern bloc countries.
But a failure to create a more effective advocate for workers' demands in China could exacerbate tensions going forward, according to Yu Jianrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who studies protest and unrest.
"For present-day China, allowing workers to have their own organization to represent their interests is a matter of their basic rights, it would also benefit the development of long-term social stability," Yu wrote in a Chinese current affairs magazine, Southern Breeze, this month.
While the risks are clear, the push for a more effective worker's movement in China continues to be hampered by strong-arm tactics from bosses to split the ranks of striking workers, intimidation by officials, and fragmentation among diverse migrant worker factions found in typical Chinese coastal factories.
Indeed, at the Honda Lock plant in Xiaolan, the strikers at first appeared united and determined, but their resolve was slowly broken by police intimidation, management's obstinacy and recruitment of fresh workers as a possible hedge if the strike continued.
"These days, most of the workers are young kids born in the '90s who will just quit if they're unhappy ... many of these youngsters won't take a stance," said Liu Youlin, a labor rights activist working in a small Shenzhen factory.
While few young workers consider themselves to be natural born rebels, news of the suicides at Foxconn and the recent strikes at Honda and Toyota have blazed across migrant workers communities in factory towns across China.
"It makes the workers feel that their factory's wages, management system, human rights, working and living environment should be improved," said Liu at the Institute of Contemporary Observation. "If even a company as good as Foxconn has caused all these workers to kill themselves, those working at far worse factories should demand a little more."
Analysts differ on whether China has now reached its "Lewis Turning Point," the moment in a developing economy when once ample labor surpluses turn to shortages, and wages start to rise rapidly.
What's clear, though, is that with a rising aversion of China's younger generation toward dehumanising factory work, coupled with a shrinking pool of rural workers willing to move to coastal regions given rising incomes and opportunities inland, the failure to address nationwide labor market imbalances through concerted policy action could hamper the productivity and growth of China's gargantuan export sector in the coming decade.
"Weak population growth may also substantially slow the flow of workers into manufacturing and services over the next few years," wrote Mark Williams, a China economist with Capital Economics in a recent paper.
"The total workforce could start to shrink in five years."
Back at the Honda Lock plant in Xiaolan, most of the workers have returned to their posts, settling for a wage package offering just a 200 yuan pay rise, far less than the 700 yuan hike they had demanded.
Wei wasn't among them, however. He quit his job at the factory, saying he wanted to return home and rest for a while.
"After working three years, I've only saved several thousand yuan. What's the point?," he said. "We have no future, no plans, no answers."
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