China has detained student organisers and factory workers in at least three cities as a crackdown against labour protests spreads across the country.
Security forces stormed student and worker dormitories in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen on Friday night, according to student activists, taking away five university students, three workers in Guangdong province, as well as several employees at a Shenzhen-based labour rights organisation.
The arrests come after nearly 40 leftist student activists, many of them graduates of China’s most selective universities, were arrested earlier this summer after trying to help workers trying to unionise at a Jasic Technology factory in Shenzhen.