By Diego Laje, for CNN
Foshan, China (CNN) -- Zhang Xinquan has to learn how to do business again. As a top manager in a major leather and shoe business, he built his career turning profits in booming China. But these profits are now getting harder to come by.
"Prices in the U.S. and European markets are down," Zhang told CNN, "prices of raw materials and labor are growing, therefore we can't increase salaries, and margins are shrinking".
A sea change is happening in the Chinese manufacturing world. China, which built its economy on the back of its massive low-cost labor force, is now seeing an increase in labor disputes as workers demand higher wages and better work conditions.
That is especially true in the province of Guangdong in southeastern China. Just across the border from Hong Kong, the area was ground zero for the country's economic explosion when it first opened to the West in 1980.
But recent events show the growing pains of the region as its manufacturing base matures. Electronics manufacturer Foxconn -- which builds products for Apple, Dell and Sony -- recently promised 30 percent pay increases to employees after a string of worker suicides at its factories in Shenzhen. Honda offered a 24 percent pay increase last week for workers at a components factory in Foshan after a strike there ground the firm's supply chain to a halt.
