Numbers associated with China are usually big. Even so, a Beijing academic’s recent estimate of the number of “incidents” – an official euphemism for strikes, protests and riots – at 180,000 last year, double the number five years ago, is huge. It works out at 493 a day.

That might seem implausibly high even for a country of more than 1bn citizens, but not in the past few days.

In the southern town of Zengcheng, usually better known for its production of blue jeans, migrant workers rioted over the weekend after security staff manhandled a pregnant 20-year-old street hawker. On Monday the focus was in the eastern city of Yangxunqiao, where workers seeking compensation for lead poisoning were prevented by riot police from boarding buses to go and petition higher authorities. In the central province of Hubei last week protesters pelted police with eggs and bottles after the death in custody of a popular anti-corruption official.