China is hardly a place where we would expect to find widespread labor insurgency. And, indeed, Tan was fired soon after leading the strike in Honda's transmission plant and went back to his native Hunan. But the action at the Foshan Honda factory triggered strikes all over the Eastern Chinese industrial zone, especially in Japanese-owned firms, which had come to China to take advantage of its cheap and, until recently, docile labor force. Not only that: Unlike most Chinese industrial actions before 2010, which had focused on poor working conditions and wages, this one made a new demand – the right to form a labor union independent of the party-controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions. Similar to the Solidarity union in Poland, which we will turn to later, Chinese workers were beginning to understand that without representation, their material demands would go unanswered.