Protests in China are often small- scale. On 17 May, a handful of workers at an air-purifier factory in Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian province, south-east China, gathered to demand the payment of wages that, they said, were in arrears. The protest was quiet, but it was one of nearly 30 similar demonstrations this month alone. With China’s factories reopened and draconian coronavirus measures abandoned, workers are also going on strike at a remarkable rate. This year in China there have already been at least 130 factory strikes, more than triple the number in the whole of 2022, according…