From March to May 2002, tens of thousands of Chinese workers in three, northeastern “rust belt” cities protested layoffs, corruption and the non-payment of their pensions. It was China’s longest spell of public unrest since the 1989 Democracy Movement — and it attracted several Beijing-bashing millenarians to the pages of western newspapers.  China’s “one-child policy has resulted in a rapidly aging nation,” wrote American lawyer Gordon G. Chang in the International Herald