A strike against Yue Yuan International, world's large manufacturer of sport shoes, began on April 14, 2014. It now includes 60,000 workers at all seven factories in the Dongguan complex.

Yue Yuan makes one-fifth of the world's athletic shoes, including brands like Nike, Crocs, Adidas, Reebok. Puma, Asics, New Balance, Timberland and Rockport.

The strike at Hong Kong-headquartered Yue Yuan Industrial Holdings Limited (its parent company is the Taiwanese-owned Pou Chen Group; until 2009 Yue Yuan was one of the bluechip stocks in the Hang Seng Index of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange), the largest athletic shoes manufacturer in the world, has spread over 10 days and now includes over 60,000 workers.

After recent strikes at IBM and Walmart, also located in the Pearl River Delta, the walkout threatens to spread throughout the region -- as did the Honda strike on Foshan in 2010; the Yue Yuan stoppage has become the largest industrial action in China since then.

Workers went out after finding out that the legal work contracts they had been signing with the company were actually fake and also that the company had been significantly underpaying them in their social insurance for nearly 20 years.

Faced with the company's stubbornness and piecemeal offers, more and more workers have joined and it has now ballooned to include a solidarity strike from workers in another province also working for Yue Yuan.