China

China - Compensation & Benefit Legislation

CAPITAL

Beijing

CLIMATE

Extremely diverse; tropical in south to subarctic in north.

LANGUAGES

Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, and other minority languages.

LEGAL SYSTEM

A complex amalgam of custom and statute, largely criminal law; rudimentary civil code in effect since 1 January 1987; new legal codes in effect since 1 January 1980. Continuing efforts are being made to improve civil, administrative, criminal, and commercial law.

CURRENCY

Chinese Yuan Renminbi (1 USD = 8.28650 CNY as of March 1, 2002)

CHINA - COST-OF-LIVING

ERI's Relocation Assessor is a recommended source for cost-of-living data.

CHINA - EMBASSY/CONSULATES

U. S. Embassy at Beijing

3 Xiu Shui Bei Jie

Chaoyang District

Beijing, China

100600 PSC 461, Box 50

APO AP 96521-0002

Beijing, China

Telephone: [86] (10) 6532-3431

Fax: [86] (10) 6532-3297

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/

U.S. Consulate General Chengdu
No. 4 Lingshiguan Road
Chengdu, Sichuan, PRC 610041
Telephone: (28) 558-3992
Fax: (28) 558-3520

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/consulates/chengdu/

U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou

No. 1 Shamian South St.

Guangzhou, P. R. C.а 510133
Telephone: (86-20) 8188-8911

Fax: (86-20) 8186-4001

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/consulates/guangzhou/

U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong

26 Garden Road

Hong Kong
Telephone: (852) 25239011

Fax: (852) 28451598

http://www.usconsulate.org.hk/

U.S. Consulate General Shanghai
1469 Huai Hai Zhong Lu,

Shanghai, P.R.C. 200031
Telephone:а (86-21) 6433 - 6880а

Fax: (86-21) 6433 - 4122

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/consulates/shanghai/

U.S. Consulate Shenyang

No.52, 14 Wei Road

Heping District

Shenyang, Liaoning, P.R.C 110003
Telephone: 86-24-2322-1198ааааааааа

Fax: 86-24-2322-2374

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/consulates/shenyang/index.html

Embassy of the People's Republic of China at Washington D.C.

2300 Connecticut Ave. N.W.

Washington D.C. 20008

Telephone: (202) 328-2500

Fax: (202) 588-0032

E-mail: chinaembassy_us@fmprc.gov.cn

http://www.china-embassy.org/

CHINA - HOLIDAYS

New Year's Day
Chinese New Year
Labour Day (May 1)
National Days (October 1)

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CHINA - LEAVE

Annual Leave: No mandatory annual leave.

Maternity Leave: 90 days Ц 100% of pay (paid for by social security).

CHINA - MINIMUM AGE

Laborers between the ages of 16 and 18 are referred to as "juvenile workers" and are prohibited from engaging in certain forms of physical work, including labor in mines.

(Section 6.d. Acceptable Conditions of Work, China Ц Report of Human Rights Practices, 2001, U.S. Department of State.)

CHINA - REMUNERATION

ERI's Geographic and Salary Assessors are recommended sources for international remuneration covering 189 countries.

CHINA - MINIMUM REMUNERATION

(Section 6.e. Acceptable Conditions of Work, China Ц Report of Human Rights Practices, 2001, U.S. Department of State.)

CHINA - REPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES (2001, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE)

Section 6 Worker Rights

a. The Right of Association

The Constitution provides for freedom of association. However, in practice, workers are not free to organize or join unions of their own choosing. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU, which is controlled by the Communist Party and headed by a key Party official, is the sole legal workers' organization. The ACFTU chairman is a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The Trade Union Law gives the ACFTU control over the establishment and operation of all subsidiary union organizations and activities throughout the country, including approximately 500,000 enterprise-level unions. Independent unions are illegal. The Trade Union Law allows workers to decide whether to join official unions in their enterprises. There have been no reports of repercussions for the small percentage of workers in the state-owned sector who have not joined.

Although the ACFTU and its constituent unions have a monopoly on trade union activity, their influence over the workplace has diminished with the economic reforms of recent years. ACFTU unions have been relatively powerless to protect the tens of millions of members who have lost their jobs in recent years or, for those still employed, had their wages or benefits delayed or cut in the massive restructuring of state-owned enterprises. The unions have, however, provided benefits and reemployment assistance to affected workers.

The ACFTU also has had difficulty organizing in the country's rapidly growing private sector where union membership during the year was estimated to be less than 20 percent. The presence of Communist Party representatives in a small percentage of private enterprises, and of nonunion worker organizations in some state-owned enterprises has done little to alter the fact that the great majority of workers in the private sector have no official union representation. The ACFTU's loss of membership in the state-owned sector and its weakness in the private sector have reduced ACFTU membership from nearly 100 percent of the urban workforce during the height of the planned economy to approximately 50 percent (or 103 million) during the year, according to the ACFTU.

The existence of an enormous rural labor force--some 550 million out of a total labor force of about 750 million--also complicates the organization and protection of workers. Farmers do not have a union or any other similar organization. Of some 125 million rural residents working in township and village enterprises (TVE's), only a very small percentage are represented by a union. A "floating" migrant labor force of over 100 million has proven especially difficult to organize and protect. Some of these migrants gravitate to temporary or seasonal low-wage work in urban areas where their residence, under the country's registration system, often is technically illegal. Many migrants, including numbers of young women, are attracted to the burgeoning private sector where unions are few and where their desire to earn more than they can in rural areas makes them easy to exploit.

Faced with these difficulties, the ACFTU strongly supported major amendments to the Trade Union Law, passed by the NPC in October. The amended law gives the ACFTU clearer responsibility than previously to represent workers' interests first and foremost. The amendments also give union organizing activities in the private sector legal protection that previously was lacking. The amended law provides specific legal remedies against attempts by employers to interfere with these organizing activities or to punish union officials for failure to carry out official duties.

During the year, the Government maintained its longstanding rejection of illegal union activity. The amendments to the Trade Union Law did not change the official legal monopoly of the ACFTU. Moreover, when it ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in February, the Government stated that it would apply the Covenant's provision for freedom of association in accordance with the country's actual conditions. This meant, in practice, a continuation of the legal prohibition on independent unions.

During the year, the Government, as in the past, took specific actions against illegal union activity, including the detention or arrest of labor activists. Li Wangyang, who had been released from prison in June 2000 after serving 11 years for organizing an independent union during the 1989 prodemocracy movement, was rearrested during the year and sentenced to 10 years. Li was charged with "incitement to subversion of state power," an apparent reference to his attempt to publicize prison conditions through a hunger strike. In another prominent case, Cao Maobing, an electrician from Jiangsu Province, was detained in a mental facility late in 2000, allegedly for his attempts to form an independent union at a Jiangsu silk factory. Cao was held for more than 200 days, and released in July.

Other labor activists, detained in previous years, were reported still in detention at year's end. Observers report that Shanghai labor dissident Wang Miaogen, detained in 1996, was still being held in a psychiatric hospital. The list of labor activists reported as still being held also included Zhang Shanguang, Li Jiaqing, labor lawyer Xu Jian, Miao Jinhong, Ni Xiafei, Li Keyou, Liao Shihua, Yue Tianxiang, Guo Xinmin, He Zhaohui, and Liu Jingsheng.

In September, the Government released Yang Qinheng, a prodemocracy activist who most recently had been jailed for demanding the right to form independent trade unions in an open letter to Government leaders.

Neither the Constitution nor the law provides for the right to strike. However, the amended Trade Union Law acknowledges that strikes may occur, in which case the union is to reflect the views and demands of workers in seeking a resolution of the strike. Some observers have interpreted this provision to offer at least a theoretical legal basis for the right to strike. Nonetheless, strikes as an element of workers' negotiating tactics remained virtually unknown during the year.

As the pace of economic change has accelerated, changing relationships between workers and management, growing unemployment, wage and benefit arrearages, and uncertainties about the viability of a new social safety net system have produced a growing number of labor disputes and spontaneous protests.

The rising trend of labor disputes and protests continued during the year. With media coverage strictly controlled, accurate statistics, especially of labor protests, have been impossible to obtain. Nonetheless, observers estimated that the number of protests during the year was greater than in 2000. In July thousands of coal miners in Jilin province reportedly protested nonpayment of wages by blocking a railway line. In June thousands of petrochemical workers in Beijing protested peacefully over anticipated workforce downsizing. In a few cases, workers took managers hostage, but were persuaded to end these standoffs peacefully. In general, however, it appears that most protests were short and nonviolent. With some reported exceptions, authorities generally responded with minimal force and refrained from detaining large numbers of participants. The Government also sometimes provided funds to alleviate wage or benefit arrearages in response to demonstrations.

The Labor law provides for mediation, arbitration, and court resolution of labor disputes. Under these procedures, cases are to be dealt with first in the workplace, through a mediation committee, then, if unresolved, through a local arbitration committee outside the workplace. If no solution is reached at this level, the dispute may be submitted to the courts. According to Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MOLSS) statistics, arbitration committees nationwide handled over 135,000 labor disputes in 2000, an increase of 12.5 percent over the previous year.

Observers differ over the effectiveness of these dispute resolution procedures in protecting workers' rights and interests. Workers are reported to have little trust in the fairness of workplace mediation. They have little say in the choice of mediators. Moreover, unions that play a major mediation role are viewed as inclined to favor management. A 1999 ICFTU report contended that mediation efforts often are preferential to employers and largely are ineffective in advocating worker rights.

Workers appear to favor to arbitration over workplace mediation. While workers have little say in the choice of arbitrators and may look with suspicion on the local government role in the process, the majority of arbitration decisions have favored workers. In the view of some observers, this fact helps explain the rapid rise in the number of arbitration cases.

The country is a member of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and has ratified core ILO conventions prohibiting child labor and discrimination in remuneration for male and female workers. The Government has not ratified other core conventions regarding the right of association, the right to collective bargaining, and the prohibition against compulsory labor. However, the Government has started to work closely with the ILO on programs in such areas as industrial relations, employment promotion, and occupational safety.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) brought a complaint to the ILO against the Government in 1998, alleging the detention of trade unionists and violations of the right to organize. The Government denied the allegations in its official response to the ILO in March 1999. The ILO's governing body found the response inadequate and requested the Government to provide additional information. By the end of the year, the Government still had not replied to the request.

The ACFTU maintains active relations with international trade union organizations, and has established exchanges and cooperative relations with over 400 trade unions and international and regional trade organizations in over 130 countries and regions. In 2000, it received its first-ever visit from the head of the ICFTU. According to ACFTU officials, the ACFTU sent nearly 100 delegations overseas to meet and study with trade union counterparts during the year.

b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively

The Labor Law permits collective bargaining for workers in all types of enterprises. Collective contracts are to be worked out between the labor union (or worker representatives in the absence of a union) and management, and to specify such matters as working conditions, wage scales, and hours of work. The law also permits workers and employers in all types of enterprises to sign individual contracts, which are to be drawn up in line with the terms of the collective contract.

According to official statistics for 2000, 107 million urban workers out of a total estimated urban workforce of approximately 200 million were covered by individual or collective labor contracts. Of these, approximately 64 million were covered by 240,000 collective contracts. However, the majority of these contracts, reached under the auspices of ACFTU unions with state-owned enterprises, were not the products of genuine collective bargaining. Rather, they represented decisions made by enterprise managers, in consultation with the enterprise's Community Party secretary and ACFTU representatives, on general working conditions and the division of a government-mandated total wage package.

Changing labor-management relations as the country moves toward a market system are creating pressures for collective bargaining that involves more genuine negotiations and takes workers' interests into greater account. The amended Trade Union Law speaks more specifically than before about unions' responsibility to bargain collectively on behalf of workers' interests. However, the development of genuine collective bargaining remained more potential than real during the year.

In the private sector, where official unions are few and alternative union organizations are unavailable, workers face substantial obstacles to bargaining collectively with management.

Workplace-based worker congresses are common. These congresses are supposed to be the vehicle for worker input into enterprise policies and for guiding union activities. However, many are little more than rubber stamps for deals predetermined by enterprise management, the union, and the Communist Party representative.

The amended Trade Union Law strengthens the longstanding prohibitions against antiunion discrimination by providing specific legal remedies for such actions (see Section 6.a.). The Law also specifies that union representatives may not be transferred or terminated by enterprise management during their term of office. These provisions were aimed primarily at the private sector, where resistance to unions has been common. Antiunion activity is virtually unknown in the state-owned sector.

Laws governing working conditions in Special Economic Zones (SEZ's) are not significantly different from those in the rest of the country. Wages in the SEZ's and in the southeastern part of the country generally are higher for some categories of workers than in other parts of the country because high levels of investment have created a great demand for available labor. As in other areas of the country, officials have admitted that some foreign investors in the SEZ's are able to negotiate "sweetheart" deals with local partners that effectively bypass labor regulations. Some foreign businesses in the SEZ's have ACFTU-affiliated unions, and management reports positive relations with union representatives. One reason is that the ACFTU discourages strikes and work stoppages.

c. Prohibition on Forced or Compulsory Labor

The law prohibits forced and bonded labor, but forced labor is a serious problem in penal institutions. Prisoners regularly work in prisons and reeducation-through-labor institutions. In some cases, prisoners work in facilities directly connected with the penal institution and, in some cases, in nonprison enterprises with which the institution contracts to provide prisoner labor. The economic benefits that penal institutions may receive from prisoners' work and the inconsistent application of standards of official accountability increase the chance that some prison labor may be coercive or even abusive.

Credible reports from international human rights organizations and the foreign press indicate that some persons in pretrial detention also are required to work. Inmates of custody and repatriation centers, who also have been detained administratively without trial, reportedly are required to perform labor while in detention, often to repay the cost of their detention. Most such inmates perform agricultural labor (see Sections 1.d. and 1.e.).

In 1992 and 1994, the U.S. and Chinese Governments signed agreements that allow U.S. officials, with the approval of the Government, to visit prison production facilities to check specific allegations that prisoners in these facilities have produced goods exported to the United States. Some, although not all, of these allegations claim that these goods were produced under conditions of forced labor. Since these agreements were signed, the Government's cooperation with U.S. officials has been sporadic, at best. Between 1997 and year's end, the Government allowed U.S. officials to conduct only one visit to a prison labor facility. At year's end, eight prison visit requests, some dating back to 1992, still were pending. The Government has taken the position that the reeducation-through-labor facilities are not prisons and has denied access to them under the prison labor agreements.

Most anecdotal reports contend that working conditions in the penal system's light manufacturing factories are similar to those in other factories, but conditions on the system's farms and in mines can be very harsh. As in many workplaces in the country, safety is a low priority. There are no comprehensive statistics for work-related deaths and injuries among prisoners. However, in May 39 prisoner-miners were killed in a coal mine flood in Sichuan Province in May.

Trafficking in women and children and the kidnaping and sale of women and children for purposes of prostitution are serious problems (see Section 6.f.).

The Government prohibits forced and bonded labor by children, and enforcement on balance is deemed to be effective (see Section 6.d.).

d. Status of Child Labor Practices and Minimum Age for Employment

The law prohibits the employment of children, but the Government has not adopted a comprehensive policy to combat child labor. The Labor Law specifies that, with a few strictly-supervised exceptions, "no employing unit shall be allowed to recruit juveniles under the age of 16," 2 years older than the ILO standard age of 14 years for developing countries. The Labor Law specifies administrative review, fines, and revocation of business licenses of those businesses that illegally hire minors. The law also stipulates that parents or guardians should provide for children's subsistence. Laborers between the ages of 16 and 18 are referred to as "juvenile workers" and are prohibited from engaging in certain forms of physical work, including labor in mines.

The Government maintains, and it is generally believed, that the country does not have a widespread child labor problem. In October the Government convened an interagency commission to study the question of child labor. This and the fact that the commission's formation and mandate were publicly announced represented an apparent shift from the Government's previous reluctance to publicly discuss child labor or to engage in officially acknowledged study of the phenomenon. The commission's findings were not available by year's end and it was unclear whether the Government would release them publicly.

Of the country's approximately 300 million children, the number who are working in contravention of the law or ILO conventions is unclear. Local experts on child labor estimate that the number is in the tens of thousands and that the overwhelming majority of these children work at the behest of their families, especially in impoverished rural areas, to supplement family income. The existence of a large adult migrant labor force, often willing to work long hours for low wages, reduces the attractiveness of child labor for employers. Apart from agricultural work, child workers in rural areas appear to work primarily for Township and Village Enterprises (TVE's). In urban areas, they may take up such jobs as car washers, garbage collectors, and street vendors. Some academics suspect that coal mines, which often operate far from urban centers and out of the purview of law enforcement officials, also occasionally employ children.

Some students work in light industrial production while in school, apparently to raise operating funds due to inadequate government funding. In March an explosion at an elementary school in Jiangxi Province killed 42 persons, most of them school children. Local residents credibly claimed that fireworks, assembled by pupils in the school, caused the explosion. The Government initially denied this allegation but later implicitly acknowledged its accuracy. In the wake of the accident, the Jiangxi Provincial Education Department ordered all primary and secondary schools to conduct safety inspections, to limit outsiders' access to school facilities and to ensure that "production activities that might compromise the safety of teachers and students" were prohibited. In addition some local and provincial officials were dismissed.

Allegations of child labor in toy factories in Guangdong Province, made in 2000, remained unresolved. Provincial authorities declined to approve requests by foreign diplomats to speak directly with the individuals alleged to be involved. However, foreign companies that purchased these toys stated that their internal investigations did not bear out the allegations. In Shanghai, labor officials confirmed in August that a knitting company had employed underage workers. According to these officials, all of the young persons were returned to their hometowns and the company was fined from $360 to $600 (3,000 to 5,000 RMB) for each underage worker employed.

The Government has not ratified ILO convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor. The Government also has not made a public statement on the eradication of such labor or established a national program with that objective. Forced and bonded labor by children is prohibited, and enforcement is believed, on balance, to be effective (see Section 6.c.). There have been some reports of trafficking in children for the purposes of labor. However, this problem appears to be of considerably less magnitude than trafficking of children for purposes other than labor. Children trafficked to work usually are sent from poorer rural areas to relatively more affluent interior areas or large cities; traffickers reportedly often entice parents to relinquish their children with promises of the large remittances that their children will be able to send back to them. Many such children work in small factories. Rising school tuition fees and declining rural incomes discourage many rural parents from keeping their children, especially girls, in school beyond the fourth grade and make such offers more attractive. The children's remittances, along with bribes paid by traffickers to authorities, have made investigation into the scope of the problem difficult. In 2000 the media gave unprecedented coverage to illegal child labor cases, fueling concerns in nongovernment circles that child labor was a bigger problem than acknowledged by the Government.

Local government officials in Yunnan province and the All China Women's Federation have joined the Mekong Sub-Regional Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women, sponsored by the ILO and other U.N. agencies, to reenroll former child workers in school.

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

The Labor Law provides for broad legal protections for workers on such matters as working hours, wages, and safety and health. The amended Trade Union Law strengthens the authority of unions to protect workers against violation of their contractually-agreed wages, and hours of work, and against unsafe working conditions, and violations of women's or minors' special rights. The Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Occupational Diseases, passed during the year, clarifies responsibilities for work-related illness and specifies specific penalties for violation of the law. The draft of a national Occupational Safety Law was completed, with officials anticipating passage by mid-2002. Although a more comprehensive structure of national laws setting standards for work conditions is being created, enforcement of these laws is a problem.

There is no national minimum wage. The Labor Law allows local governments to determine their own standards on minimum wages. In general, local governments set minimum wage levels higher than the levels they set for the local minimum standard income, but lower than the current wage level of the average worker. Minimum wages usually are sufficient to provide a decent standard of living for a worker and family. However, in the private sector, legislated norms often conflict with the desire of firms to minimize production costs. Widespread official corruption, and localities' concerns to attract and keep tax paying, job-producing enterprises that might otherwise locate elsewhere, may undercut enforcement of minimum wage and other protections for workers.

The national Labor Law mandates a 40-hour standard workweek, excluding overtime, and a 24-hour rest period weekly. It also prohibits overtime work in excess of 3 hours per day or 36 hours per month. The Labor Law also sets forth a required percentage of additional pay for overtime work. However, these standards regularly are violated, especially in the private sector, and particularly in enterprises that can rely on a vast supply of low-skilled migrant labor. Media reports note that in many industries, including textile and garment manufacturing, compulsory overtime is common, often without legally mandated overtime pay. There also are media accounts of workers being prevented from leaving factory compounds without permission.

Occupational health and safety remain serious problems. The poor enforcement of occupational health and safety regulations continues to put workers' lives at risk. Working conditions in the private sector often are poor. Recognizing this, the Government during the year created a new State Administration for Work Safety (SAWS), which it joined with the State Administration for Coal Mine Safety Supervision (SACMSS), established in 2000. In setting up SAWS/SACMSS, the Government shifted the responsibility for work safety from the State Economic and Trade Commission, which also had business promotion responsibilities, to an agency solely dedicated to work safety. SAWS has 2,950 employees in 9 departments and 68 field offices around the country. At the local level and at the actual mine sites, however, national policies are enforced by local authorities, making consistent administration of directives problematic. The Government announced its intention to increase the number of workers covered under a new work-injury insurance system from the 42 million workers covered at the end of 2000 to 50 million at the end of the year.

Despite the Government's efforts, workplace health and safety did not improve significantly during the year, and there continued to be a high rate of industrial accidents. During the year, according to SAWS/SACMSS officials, approximately 12,000 workers were killed in industrial and mine accidents, comparable to the previous year's figure of 11, 681. Coal mining continued to be by far the most dangerous sector, with approximately 6,000 deaths. A SAWS/SACMSS official estimated that one-tenth of the world's work-related deaths occur in the country (this figure includes work-related traffic deaths, which brings the acknowledged work-related death total to approximately 80,000).

These official statistics almost certainly underestimate the real scope of workplace accidents. Informed observers contend that actual workplace deaths and injuries are significantly higher than official statistics report. Investigations into workplace accidents in Guangdong province and Shenzhen municipality in 2000 and other evidence of national trends support the contention of these observers. According to SAWS, there were 75 major mining accidents (those with 10 or more deaths) through October, and 82 accidents in 2000. Industrial accident statistics for Shenzhen and Guangdong, which have been reported by the local and foreign media, suggest that official national statistics may be understated. According to press reports in April 2000, an investigation by Workers' Daily found that 15,000 serious accidents occurred in Shenzhen's 9,582 factories in 1999. The investigation also found that on average 31 workers per day were injured in work related accidents that left them permanently disabled and that 1 worker died as a result of work related accident every 4 1/2 days. The China Machinery Daily reported in 1999 that there were over 20,000 cases of industrial injuries per year in Guangdong. Enterprise owners and managers may fail to report, or may even hide, accidents or health incidents. Local officials, whether because of corruption, protection of the local economy, or protection of their own jobs, often underreport incidents.

The high rate and seriousness of coal mining accidents has highlighted serious enforcement problems in that sector. The Government, in recent years, has shut tens of thousands of small coal mines, and during the year announced tougher mine inspection and closure standards. Nonetheless, some of the worst mining accidents occurred in mines that had reopened illegally after being officially closed.

Observers attribute the enforcement problem in the coal mining sector primarily to corruption and to powerful economic interests in sustaining what is often the main employer in the small localities where many of the most dangerous mines are located. The extraordinarily wide distribution of small coal mines (which account for approximately 20,000 of an estimated 25,000 mines) and the paucity of inspectors also hinder enforcement in the coal-mining sector. In localities and at the actual mine sites, national policies are enforced by local authorities, making consistent administration of directives problematic.

In other sectors, less than half of rural enterprises meet national dust and poison standards. Many factories that use harmful products, such as asbestos, not only fail to protect their workers against the ill effects of such products, but also do not inform them about the hazards.

In small but apparently growing numbers, workers and lawyers have begun to utilize lawsuits to pursue claims, especially work injury or illness claims, against employers. The most prominent set of cases has been brought by a lawyer based in Shenzhen Province, Zhou Litai, on behalf of workers injured on the job. However, in December Shenzhen authorities contended that Zhou was not authorized to practice law in that city, casting doubt on the immediate fate of his pending cases and practice.

In October 192 workers in Zhejiang Province won the country's first class-action suit against two engineering companies for failing to protect them adequately from silicon dust. Ten of the workers already have died from silicosis and the rest have contracted the disease. A court awarded $27,400 (226,800 RMB) for each death and awards from $4,700 (38,960 RMB) to $47,050 (389,600 RMB) for those still ill.

f. Trafficking in Persons

The law prohibits trafficking in women and children; however, trafficking in persons and the abduction of women for trafficking are serious problems. The country is both a source and destination country for trafficking in persons. Most trafficking is internal for the purpose of providing lower-middle income farmers with brides or sons, but a minority of cases involve trafficking of women into forced prostitution in urban areas, and some reports suggest that some victims, especially children, are trafficked for the purpose of forced labor (see Section 6.d.).

According to UNICEF reports, most domestic trafficking flows from the country's poorer areas in south or southwest to more developed regions in the north or northeast, or along the coast.

Despite Government efforts to crack down on trafficking in women and children, the present demand far outstrips the available supply, making trafficking a profitable enterprise for those willing to risk arrest and prosecution.

CHINA - SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security Office of International Programs:

http://www.ssa.gov/SSA_Home.html

CHINA - STANDARD WORKWEEK

(Section 6.e. Acceptable Conditions of Work, China Ц Report of Human Rights Practices, 2001, U.S. Department of State.)