From the brief read of the BBC article, there appears to have been another major disruption of work in Taiyuan, at one of Apple's most famous (or perhaps infamous) suppliers, Foxconn. For those that follow these things, this follows on the heels of other incidents (another recently in Chengdu 3 months ago) involving thousands of workers. The incident in Taiyuan reportedly involved up to 2000 workers, and was supposedly caused by a "personal" issue. I don't know how one personal issue could ever escalate into involving 1999 others, but it then ultimately required up to 5000 police personnel to restore order. Chinese bloggers (per the BBC report) stated that it was plant security guards who triggered the riot after they had initially beat up a worker. Another bruise to the Apple image, IMHO... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19697344
What I find interesting is that despite Foxconn being considered a better chance to get ahead economically, that its plants nonetheless remain volatile powder kegs where even the slightest spark could trigger such massive signs of political unrest. IMHO, 2000 people just don't riot for the sake of it, especially risking what is considered (by most Chinese) as an above average paying job. However, the conditions in those plants must be of a nature that, despite Apple and Foxconn's claims, remains conducive to collective discord, as there seems to be a prevailing and perpetual undercurrent of dissatisfaction by workers across the board.
There were many other news about Foxconn in China, quite a few employees killed themselves, probably due to the conditions in the Foxconn. So a lot of stuff is going on in there and the workers and not being treated well and I can see this will only escalate further in the future.
