Hundreds of taxi drivers went on strike yesterday in a city in central China, angry over a new government-imposed license fee, local drivers and a rights group said.
The streets of Suizhou, in Hubei Province, were empty as hundreds of drivers kept their cars at home. The city has 550 licensed taxi drivers, a government notice said.
“There’s not a single cab running on the roads of Suizhou now. We will not stop the strike until the government meets our demand, which is that they remove their fee,” said a driver who only gave his surname, Chen.
He did not want to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
It was the latest round of protests by taxi drivers in several parts of China upset at increased costs and unlicensed competition.
The unrest highlights workers’ increasing anxiety over their incomes and job security as the Chinese economy slows.
News about the global financial crisis and plunging markets is also adding to concerns.
The Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a China-based activist organization, said in a statement that a small group of taxi drivers gathered near the city’s rail station and another went to the city government to present a petition.
The Suizhou government announced last week that taxi drivers would have to pay a fee of 4,000 yuan (US$58) before the end of the year to keep their taxi license or it would be confiscated, the Suizhou Daily said.
The new fee is an attempt by the government to regulate the market, as previously free business licenses were getting illegally resold among drivers for as high as 260,000 yuan, the article said.
“Many of the drivers are not running their cars today. The fee is a bit too much because our business hasn’t been great, the market is poorly managed,” said a driver surnamed Zhang, who did not want to give his first name.
The protest comes on the heels of a strike in Chongqing by 9,000 taxi drivers earlier this month over rental fees and fuel shortages.
It also prompted scores of drivers in other parts of the country — including hundreds in the southern city of Shantou last week — to take similar action.
Zhang Li, a woman who answered the telephone at the Suizhou government office, said officials had not received any information about the strike, and referred queries to the traffic management bureau.
A man who only gave his surname, Guan, at the traffic management bureau said they had not noticed the strike and refused to answer any questions.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
The Philippines yesterday slammed an “irresponsible” Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the “status quo” was unchanged. Tiexian Reef (鐵線礁), also known as Sandy Cay Reef, lies near Thitu Island, or Pagasa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef in the middle of this month. The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its
RSS