Toyota Motor said production at an assembly plant in southern China would remain idle for the night shift Wednesday, as rival Honda was hit by a strike at another auto parts supplier.

The disputes are the latest in a wave of labour unrest to hit foreign companies in China, which has highlighted growing discontent among millions of workers over low pay and poor conditions.

Operations at Toyota's plant in the southern city of Guangzhou have been halted since Tuesday due to a walkout at a unit of Toyota-affiliated parts maker Denso Corp.

A Tokyo-based Toyota spokesman, Paul Nolasco, told AFP the automaker did not know when production at the factory in Guangdong province, China's manufacturing hub, would resume.

The strike at the Denso Corp. unit, which makes fuel injectors and other components, started Monday when more than 200 employees stopped work and demanded higher pay, state media reported Tuesday.

Local government and labour union officials have been sent to the factory to help resolve the dispute, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The suspension came days after Toyota resumed operations at assembly lines in the northern city of Tianjin, where production had stopped briefly due to a three-day walkout at a plant run by Toyota-affiliated Tianjin Toyoda Gosei.

Rival automaker Honda was also hit by labour unrest Wednesday when an assembly plant run by its Chinese joint venture Guangqi Honda Automobile stopped operations after strikes at a Japanese spring suspension supplier.

The dispute at the NHK Spring Co factory in Guangdong province had been resolved and the Honda plant would resume operations on Thursday, Beijing-based Honda spokesman Takayuki Fujii told AFP.

Honda's auto assembly lines in southern China have been stalled several times in recent weeks because of labour disputes at its parts manufacturers.