ZHONGSHAN, China (Reuters) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged better treatment of the nation's vast army of migrant labourers as employees at a Honda factory halted the latest strike that has laid bare growing worker assertiveness.

The strike at the factory making locks for Honda vehicles was the latest labour dispute to hit factories in southern China's Pearl River Delta, a sprawling industrial zone that makes nearly a third of the country's exports, by workers demanding a greater piece of China's growing economic wealth.

If it spreads, the ripples of unrest could present hard choices for China's ruling Communist Party, which has vowed to raise the incomes of hundreds of millions of farmers and migrant workers, but also wants to keep export-driven industry humming and stifle any threats to top-down Party control.

In the most high-level comments to touch on migrant worker conditions since the strikes broke out, Wen said he recognised that a new generation moving from poor villages to work in factories and on building sites would not be satisfied with the same tough conditions their parents endured.

"Rural migrant workers are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce. Our wealth and our tall buildings are all distillations of your hard work and sweat," Wen told a group of migrant workers in Beijing on Monday, the official People's Daily reported yesterday.

"Your labour is a glorious thing, and it should be respected by society. The government and all parts of society should treat young migrant workers as they would treat their own children."

Wen's published comments did not directly address the recent labour unrest. But he told a group of young and vocal migrant workers that he "understood" their complaints about demanding conditions, long hours, and drab lives. Some workers, however, both at a striking Honda plant and at a nearby work centre plastered with notices for jobs paying slightly more than minimum levels, dismissed Wen's rhetoric and called for more formal policy intervention to extend recent increases of minimum wages in Chinese coastal regions.