Philip P. Pan and Jin Ling report how workers in China threaten suicide to get paid.

Meanwhile, John Ruwitch reports on how some newspapers and Web sites are starting to report on protests by unpaid migrant workers--a "meaningful step toward a slightly freer press". The media attention coincides "with a drive by new Communist Party chief Hu Jintao to champion the cause of the impoverished." Many economists say that the rural-urban wealth gap "is wider now than when the communists came to power in 1949." (Even if peasant incomes have grown in absolute terms.) The official Xinhua news agency says per capita net income for rural people averaged 2,366 yuan ($285) that year. The urban disposable income last year was about 7,000 yuan ($845) per head. (Although according to The Economist, "measured by the benchmark of purchasing-power parity, China's income per head is $5,500").