It could turn out to be the strike felt across the world. When employees at Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn went on strike earlier this summer, the ramifications were not immediately obvious. Their demands for better pay and conditions were met with a 30 percent hike in salaries.

This has now encouraged workers in many other Chinese companies to follow suit. The result? Western companies are being squeezed as their China costs rise, which they cannot offset with higher prices in their home markets. Some manufacturers are even relocating plants back to the US as a result.

New research by Credit Suisse shows how dramatically this is trending. A research report released yesterday-The Rising Cost of Goods from China-reveals that 93 percent of companies that were surveyed by the bank fear a hit to their margins over the next 12 months due to rising costs in China.

Those companies that are expected to be worst hit include electrical consumer good manufacturers, apparel companies and industrials. Indeed, GE revealed last week that it was relocating a water heater manufacturing plant back from China to Louisville Kentucky due to the increase in China costs.

In many ways this is a natural outcome from China's break-neck growth. Earlier this week it was announced that the country had grown to become the second largest economy in the world.

What has been remarkable is that after 30 years of mainly double-digit growth rates, cost inflation had not already reared its ugly head. This was largely to do with the seemingly limitless supply of cheap labor, willing to exchange the rigors of rice farming for the drudgery of a factory assembly line.

But it was also the government's stated economic aim to maintain stability, and domestic price controls have been a pillar supporting the edifice of mild inflation.

Western companies and their consumers have benefited massively from this. Costs could be kept down, while volumes (especially to China itself) could rise. That now appears to be ending.

Wages and other costs are increasing quicker than sales. And weak demand in the West limits companies' ability to pass those cost rises onto their consumers. In the Credit Suisse survey, the majority of respondents felt they did not have the power to pass on increased prices to their consumers.

One outcome of this situation might be the discovery of the whole concept of profit in China. Chinese businesses run on tiny margins-focusing on revenue and market share. In a fast growing country with limited cost pressures, this could just about be justified. But not any longer.

As Chinese suppliers focus on profits, their Western corporate customers will face even more pressure on their own margins. Unless they can persuade their beleaguered and unemployed consumers in the West to pay more, they will bear the brunt of the price rises in their own earnings.

It is not just China. Service companies in India are also facing increased costs in the form of wage inflation. One of the largest business process companies in India, Genpact, said this week that it was getting as expensive to hire workers in India as it was in the US. As a result, it will shift hiring to the US at the expense of India.

Companies and consumers have enjoyed a golden age, where cost pressures on the supply chain have been muted due to the presence of cheap labor in India and China. Those days might now be coming to an end.