The strike at an Adidas shoe factory, the sheer scale of it and workers’ increasing skills of organising strikes without bona fide union representation have created a renewed round of debate on how Chinese authorities will handle increasingly tense industrial relations in China…The nearly two week-long strike at…Yue Yuen…motivated 40,000 workers to join in…The deployment of riot police and even military forces to threaten, beat, and detain striking workers, and the criminal prosecution of strike leaders, only…created more tension between workers and the government, leaving the original labour dispute largely unresolved. The factory unions are neither trusted by workers nor responsive to workers’ complaints before it is much too late...The official union controlled by the Communist Party…has been busy rolling out union reform by democratic elections in grassroots unions …Both the official union and the employer fear workers might elect the ‘wrong guy’, who would neither help the official union foster stability nor help the employer maintain a loyal and productive workforce…