Health and Safety in China: 12 Duties for a Shanghai Office
Foreign groups operating in China usually have good legal advice on tax, licensing and employment contracts, and much thinner advice on occupational safety.
That gap matters more in China than in most places, for one reason above all: the framework attaches personal liability to identified responsible people, and the reported position is that there is no exception for foreign persons or those residing abroad.
This is an outline of the duties as they apply to an ordinary commercial office. Take advice locally, because China's framework is spread across several laws, supplemented by provincial rules that differ materially.
Twelve duties.
1. Three laws, not one
The first thing to understand is that there is no single statute to read.
The Work Safety Law, revised in 2021, is the main national law on workplace safety and sets out employer duties including safety inspections and emergency planning. The Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases governs work-related illness, exposure and health examinations. The Labour Law and Labour Contract Law require workplaces to protect workers' health and safety.
The 2021 revision of the Work Safety Law tightened accident prevention requirements and increased penalties. English translations of the 2021 text are available, and should be read alongside local advice rather than in place of it.
2. The regulator changed, and older guidance has not caught up
A point that causes confusion when reading anything written before 2018.
The State Administration of Work Safety was absorbed into the Ministry of Emergency Management in March 2018, which now holds the work safety regulatory function.
Occupational disease prevention sits with health administrative departments, and labour relations and work injury recognition with labour security departments. So three strands of the framework are supervised by different arms of government.
3. The core employer duties
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The Work Safety Law requires production and operation entities to provide safe working conditions, carry out safety inspections, plan for emergencies and manage hazards.
For an office, the practical translation is ordinary: a workplace that is safe to occupy, emergency and evacuation arrangements that work, and somebody accountable for both.
4. Safety training is an obligation on both sides
Employees must receive education and safety training to acquire the knowledge needed for their jobs, improve their safety skills and develop the ability to prevent accidents and respond to emergencies.
Employees, in turn, must fulfil safety responsibilities in their posts, follow the entity's rules and operating procedures, use protective equipment correctly, and report hazards immediately to those in charge.
That reciprocal structure appears in most jurisdictions and is expressed unusually directly here.
5. Pre-job health examinations, and a prohibition
The duty most often missed by foreign employers, and it is framed as a prohibition rather than a requirement.
Under the occupational disease law, employers are prohibited from allowing a worker who has not completed a pre-job physical examination to engage in any work involving exposure to occupational hazards.
So the examination is a gate rather than a formality. The question for an office employer is whether any of its roles involve exposure to occupational hazards as defined, which is a question to answer with local advice rather than by assumption.
6. Occupational contraindications are a bar to the role
The companion prohibition.
Employers are prohibited from allowing a worker with occupational contraindications to work in a position where those contraindications apply.
That is a stronger position than most Western frameworks, which would treat the same situation as a matter for adjustment. Here the examination result can determine whether the person may hold the role at all.
7. Diagnosis is restricted to designated institutions
Worth knowing before an issue arises.
Diagnosis of occupational diseases must be carried out by qualified doctors authorised at designated institutions, and must be based on the worker's employment records, qualified records of exposure to hazards in the workplace, and clinical findings.
Note the middle element. Your own exposure records form part of the diagnostic basis, which makes record keeping a substantive matter rather than an administrative one.
8. Work-related injury insurance is mandatory
Not an optional benefit, and not the same as private insurance.
Under the Social Insurance Law, employers must contribute to work-related injury insurance for employees. Where the employer participates, the fund covers most of the cost and compensation payable to an employee who contracts an occupational disease.
Enrolment is therefore a compliance matter, and a gap in enrolment is a direct exposure.
9. The employer still pays salary during treatment
The detail groups miss when budgeting.
Even with work-related injury insurance in place, the employer must continue to pay the employee a normal salary for the period during which they cease work and receive treatment.
So the insurance covers treatment and compensation, and the wage cost stays with you.
10. Injury insurance does not exclude civil claims
A structural point that differs from some jurisdictions.
Employees harmed in accidents related to work safety who are entitled to claim compensation under relevant civil laws have the right to demand that compensation in addition to their work-related injury insurance entitlement.
The two routes coexist rather than one replacing the other.
11. The labour contract itself must address safety
An unusual requirement, and an easy one to comply with once known.
The labour contract concluded between the entity and its employees must specify items relating to the protection of employees' safety and the prevention of occupational hazards, along with items concerning payment for work-related injury insurance.
A group using a standard international contract template translated into Chinese should check that these provisions are present.
12. Personal liability reaches people who are not in China
The point to brief upward, and the reason this article opened with it.
Chinese work safety law identifies responsible persons and attaches liability to them, including regulatory fines and, in serious cases, criminal liability.
Local ordinances define the responsible person broadly. A Shenzhen ordinance is reported to follow a general manager approach covering anyone with general management responsibility over operations, including the statutory representative, investors, or whoever holds the highest level of managerial control. There is no exception for foreign persons or those residing abroad.
A group director who has never visited the site may still be within scope, which is a materially different position from the one they occupy at home.
What a China entity needs
| Duty | Position | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| The framework | Three laws plus provincial rules | One law assumed |
| Regulator | Ministry of Emergency Management since 2018 | Older guidance followed |
| Core duties | Safe conditions, inspections, emergency planning | Group policy assumed sufficient |
| Training | Required, with reciprocal worker duties | Not delivered locally |
| Pre-job examination | A prohibition on starting without it | Not considered |
| Contraindications | Can bar the role | Treated as an adjustment question |
| Diagnosis | Designated institutions; your records form part of it | Exposure records not kept |
| Injury insurance | Mandatory under social insurance | Enrolment gaps |
| Salary in treatment | Employer continues to pay | Not budgeted |
| Civil claims | Coexist with insurance | Assumed excluded |
| Labour contract | Must specify safety items | Template not adapted |
| Personal liability | Reaches directors abroad | Never briefed |
Rows five and twelve are where to start. The first is a gate on employment, and the second changes who in your group is personally exposed.
Provincial variation is real
Worth a separate note, because it is easy to assume a national framework behaves nationally.
Provinces issue their own regulations and they differ in substance. Several provinces including Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong have allowed certain non-workers, such as interns and working retirees, to participate in work-related injury insurance. Where an employer provides it, those benefits become available and the employer's potential liability in the event of an injury is materially reduced.
That is a concrete example of a provincial rule creating an option a national-level view would miss entirely.
China in the Asia-Pacific picture
China sits differently from its neighbours, and this series has now mapped enough of the region to say how.
Japan is health-led, requiring medical examinations from the first hire and appointments at fifty. Indonesia audits a formal management system through a licensed body. Thailand prescribes officer appointments and a management system. Korea provides for imprisonment of responsible management personnel. China spreads duties across three laws, makes social insurance enrolment a compliance matter, and attaches personal liability that does not stop at the border.
Not one of those frameworks is satisfied by another's documents. The ILO publishes regional material, and Enviliance tracks Chinese occupational safety policy developments.
Holding each entity's appointments, examinations, insurance enrolment and records in one register is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits establish whether an entity meets its own national requirements.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite coordinates locally qualified practitioners in China, so examinations, records and insurance enrolment are handled by people entitled to advise on them, while your group keeps one point of contact across every country. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
Our health and safety consultants work extensively with finance and banking, IT and software and professional services organisations, which describes most foreign-owned headcount in Shanghai and Beijing.
Our global health and safety consultants handle the regional jurisdictions that usually accompany a Chinese entity, and our international health and safety consultants can establish what is outstanding locally.
If a director in your group is the statutory representative of a Chinese entity and has never been briefed on what that carries, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
