A year after the fire, the boss and the workers were blocked by the town government: the compensation scheme in the Chaqing Plot.

(b) The owners and workers are often on either side of the wage dispute; On 12 October, another scene appeared in the town of Kinley, Zhangqinggyong district, Guangdong — hundreds of workers and factory operators came together to the town's Government to demand that fire compensation and salary arrears be resolved. The two sides were temporarily brought together by a fire on 15 August 2025, when the Zamquar plating was upgraded to an environmental park. The burning of the production workshop also left behind the question of how the loss should be shared for more than a year.

The independent event record site, Yesterday, published a video of the gathering and the participants ' statements on 16 October, which was recorded on 17 October by the Labour Network. Participants claimed that a large number of factories in the park had been destroyed in the fire of the past year, and that the operation of the affected enterprises had been difficult to resume, and workers had been permanently unpaid. One worker said that the intervention had “antemporized” that day, but did not disclose what amounts, payment subjects or schedules were involved in the progress. An oral move cannot be considered as a reparation that has already been made.

Why the owner came to the protest team

The plating plant faces both the loss of equipment and orders and the costs of hazardous chemicals, sewage treatment and safe production. The owner of the plant accused the fire-fighting enterprise of having problems with the management of dangerous chemicals and emergency disposal, while considering that deficiencies in park planning, fire-fighting facilities and day-to-day management had contributed to the increase in fire. These specific attributions have not yet been made available to judicial or public scrutiny, and therefore cannot be directly identified as constituting a breach of the law.

However, the way in which the loss passes through the production chain is already evident from the site: the shutdown of the plant means that the equipment cannot be opened and the order may be lost; Without a normal cash flow, wages have moved from the account payables of the enterprise to increasingly tight living expenses for the workers ' families. Workers do not necessarily agree with the way the plant is operated, nor can the owners be exempt from the legal obligation to pay their wages because of their own disasters, but both parties find it difficult to resolve the complex debt left by the fire by their own individual interventions.

Public governance responsibilities in environmental upgrading parks

The name “Zero-Star Plating Upgrading Environmental Estate” is itself a commitment to governance. The holding of electroplating enterprises in a centralized park usually means the identification of hazardous sources, fire-fighting water sources, evacuation roads, pollution management and accident response, requiring the responsibility of the enterprise, the park manager and the supervising department. Once the risk of a particular plant has been extended to the neighbouring plant, the loss is no longer a private matter between an employer and an employee.

More than a year after the accident, the victims still had to gather in front of the town government to seek compensation. This reveals not only the slowness of relief but also the structural weakness of local development models: the benefits of recruitment and industrial clustering are easily accounted for when parks are built; When an accident pushes the loss to small and medium-sized plants and workers, who bears the cost of common infrastructure deficiencies and aftercare arrangements may be caught in a long drag.

The public video and coverage of what was promised in the town of Kyinley that day is not fully accounted for. But it is clear that the government buildings are side by side with two categories of people who are usually opposed to each other because of the issue of wages. More than a year has passed since the flames were extinguished, and the economic consequences of the accident continue to flow between them.