Washington University Global Studies Law Review Volume 3 Issue 2 Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law January 2004 Criminal Liability for Labor Safety Violations in the People's Republic of China John Balzano Washington University School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, and the Labor and Employment Law Commons Recommended Citation John Balzano, Criminal Liability for Labor Safety Violations in the People's Republic of China, 3 WASH. U. GLOBAL STUD. L. REV. 503 (2004), https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies/vol3/iss2/17 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Global Studies Law Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. CRIMINAL LIABILITY FOR LABOR SAFETY VIOLATIONS IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA I. INTRODUCTION China’s workers have fallen on hard times.1 In the Peoples Republic of China’s (PRC’s) new socialist market economy State-owned enterprises, which currently employ about sixty percent of the urban population, have been forced to lay off workers to compete with the emerging private sector and international conglomerates.2 China scholars have recently devoted much attention to the sad state of Chinese workers, telling tales of inefficient social insurance and rampant unemployment.3 Some scholars have found it almost impossible to count the numbers of urban unemployed in the world’s most populous nation.4 Moreover, to add injury to insult, there are problems inside the factory as well.