Factories Shut as Crisis Hits China

The market for cheap plastic toys has been cut in half.

Right now, factory workers here are angry. The world's financial crisis has begun to hit them.

It is easy to understand why: since the West can't afford to buy as much, China isn't able to sell as much. In better times, the An Jia factory would ship its baby cots to the US. But now its workers say the US has stopped buying. Their wages have been cut by up to 75%.

One man waves two wage slips, typed on small pieces of paper. The slip for May shows that he earned 2,523 yuan ($370; £248) that month. The slip for September shows that his earnings were cut to 445 yuan ($65).

"Our boss wants us to bail him out," shouts Li San Le, one of the workers.

"When things were good, the boss didn't give us a raise, but now that he's in trouble, he wants us to rescue him," adds a woman standing in the crowd.

They sound a lot like the United Auto Workers union.