Operations in the eastern Chinese port of Ningbo returned to normal after a strike involving thousands of truck drivers disrupted services last week, the city’s transportation association said on Sunday. The strike, which started at the port’s Beilun area over salary and haulage rates, involved thousands of workers who clashed with police, preventing logistics firms from sending containers in and out of the port - the world’s sixth busiest. In a statement on its official microblog account, the Ningbo Transport Association said transport operations had returned to normal, adding that 6,540 trucks had moved in and out of the area between 1600 GMT on Saturday and 0600 GMT on Sunday. Container transport rates also returned to normal levels on Sunday, updates on the port’s official microblog account showed. An official at the Ningbo Transport Association declined to comment further and a Ningbo Port spokesman directed Reuters to the port’s official Weibo account. Local media reports said the transportation association, the port and the Ningbo International Freight Forwarders Association had agreed to issue new guidance to raise container trucking rates by an average of 12 percent for the first time in eight years. Ningbo Port, China’s third busiest, handled 16.77 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2013, an increase of 7 percent from the previous year. Labour strikes have become more common in China this year as businesses cut costs and foreign companies restructure or close operations in response to slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy.