2002-03
In March 2002, tens of thousands of laid-off and still-employed workers at the Daqing Oilfield took to the streets over unfair compensation for buyouts of their years of service and cuts to their medical and pension benefits. The demonstrations lasted nearly three weeks, with the crowd at one point reaching 40,000 to 50,000 people, setting a record for the scale of collective worker protests since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.