Toyota Motor Corp. is open to raising the wages of workers in China, where a series of strikes have disrupted its operations in that fast-growing market, the automaker's president said Friday. Akio Toyoda said raising wages in China would bring some benefits, like helping to create a middle class of consumers who can go out and buy Toyota vehicles. He said managers and workers need to communicate better in China, adding that they share the same goal of building quality vehicles. “It's not all bad for us” to raise the wages of Chinese workers, Toyoda told a group of US reporters at a Toyota museum in this central Japanese city. Toyota, as well as Honda Motor Corp., have been forced to halt production repeatedly at car assembly plants in China since mid-May because of strikes at affiliated suppliers. The strikes have since inspired labor unrest at a number of other foreign-operated factories in China, where workers complain of low wages and poor conditions.
