Activist alliance threatens China's Communist Party

Significance

The students had gathered from universities around the country to take part in a month-long protest that began as a dispute over the right of factory workers to unionise.

Impacts

• China's official trade union will come under even more intense pressure to reform.
• The Communist Party's ideology makes it vulnerable to left-wing criticism that it falls short of the ideals it professes.
• This protest proves that the potential exists for activists to bridge geographical and socio-economic divides.