In China, the employee handbook is evidence. A template downloaded from the internet is not.

In 2024 China’s labour mediation bodies and arbitration commissions handled 4,257,000 labour and personnel disputes involving 4,549,000 workers, and the courts concluded 614,000 labour cases. In the first nine months of 2025 the courts accepted 648,000 at first instance, 37.5 per cent more than a year earlier. When a dismissal is contested the employer carries the burden of proof, and the document it produces is the company’s rulebook. The first question a tribunal asks is not what the rulebook says. It is how the rulebook was made.

What the law asks

Article 4 of the Labour Contract Law has four paragraphs, and the first is the only one a template can satisfy. An employer must establish rules and regulations. Where those rules concern remuneration, working hours, rest and leave, safety and health, insurance and welfare, training, discipline or work quotas, they must be discussed by the employee representative congress or by all employees, who put forward proposals, and then determined through consultation on an equal footing with the trade union or the employee representatives. During their application the union or the employees may object to a rule and ask for it to be amended. And the employer must publicise the rules or inform the employees of them.

The consequence sits in the same law. Article 39 allows an employer to terminate the contract of an employee who seriously violates the rules and regulations of the employing unit. Article 80 sends a rulebook that breaches the law to the labour administration for correction, with a warning and liability for the loss caused.

The Supreme People’s Court has held the same position since 2001, and Interpretation (I) on labour disputes, in force since 1 January 2021, restates it at article 50: rules made through the democratic procedure of article 4, not contrary to law, regulation or policy, and publicised to the employees may serve as the basis for determining the rights and duties of the parties. Where the rulebook and the labour contract say different things, the employee may ask that the contract prevail, and the court will agree. Article 44 puts the burden of proof for a dismissal on the employer.

Read together, the two texts turn the handbook from a management tool into a piece of evidence with four conditions attached: made through the procedure, lawful in content, communicated in a way that can be proved, and consistent with the contracts.

What a template cannot do

A rulebook written for another company describes another company. It names departments that do not exist in yours, refers to shift patterns you do not run, sets approval lines that stop at titles nobody holds. Under article 39 a serious violation is measured against the rule as written. A rule that does not describe the workplace does not describe the violation either, and the employer, who carries the burden of proof, has no rule to point to.

The procedure leaves a file, or it did not happen. The record of the discussion with its date and attendance, the consultation with the union or the elected representatives, the acknowledgement signed at onboarding, the training record, the posting on the notice board or the intranet with its date. Each of these is a fact the employer proves. A template carries none of them, and a translation made abroad does not supply them: they exist only where the procedure was run, in Chinese, in that workplace.

Then the contracts. A group that has harmonised its handbook across twelve countries and left the Chinese labour contracts as they were has two texts in force, and article 50 tells the employee which one to choose.

Where the rulebook meets the restructuring
The Company Law revised on 29 December 2023, in force since 1 July 2024, uses the same channel for larger decisions. Article 17 requires the company to build a system of democratic management with the employee representative congress as its basic form, and to hear the union and the employees, through the congress or other forms, when it decides on restructuring, dissolution, an application for bankruptcy, major operating matters, or the formulation of important rules. Article 68 requires a limited liability company with 300 or more employees to have an employee representative on its board, unless a supervisory board with such a representative exists.

A merger of two Chinese entities, the closure of a plant, the transfer of a line to another province, a new group compliance policy: each goes through the body that article 4 already requires for the handbook. A company that has never convened that body has to convene it for the first time at the moment of the restructuring, in front of employees who have just learnt what the restructuring is. A company that convenes it every year for the rulebook has a body that exists, minutes that exist, and representatives the workforce has already chosen (note 1).

What to do, and when

Read the handbook against the company as it is: the departments, the shifts, the approval lines, the disciplinary scale. Where the text and the workplace differ, the text is rewritten, in Chinese, by someone who has stood in that workplace.

Find the file. The minutes of the congress or of the all-staff discussion, the record of the consultation, the acknowledgements. If the file does not exist, the procedure of article 4 is run now, before the next dismissal and before any restructuring, and the date of each step is recorded.

Align the handbook and the labour contracts. Where they differ, article 50 lets the employee choose. And if the Chinese company has 300 or more employees, check who sits on its board against article 68, which has applied since 1 July 2024.

A rulebook nobody discussed is read by a tribunal as a document, not as a rule.

In brief

In China a handbook binds the employee only if it was discussed with the employee representative congress or all staff, agreed with the union or elected representatives, and communicated in a way the employer can prove (Labour Contract Law, article 4; Interpretation (I), article 50).

In a dismissal case the employer carries the burden of proof, and where handbook and contract differ the employee may choose the contract (Interpretation (I), articles 44 and 50).

Restructuring, dissolution and important rules go through the same body under article 17 of the Company Law; from 300 employees an employee representative sits on the board (article 68).

Note 1 — why the procedure is collective. The statute’s word for the employer is 用人单位, the employing unit. 单位, the unit, was from the 1950s the structure through which an urban worker received housing, health care, pension and a place in society; the employee representative congress belongs to that inheritance and the 2023 Company Law names it the basic form of democratic management. At the end of 2024, 890,000 collective contracts filed with the labour authorities were in force, covering 85,680,000 workers. A rulebook is therefore read by the people it binds as the constitution of a unit they belong to, and a rule they were never asked about is a rule of somebody else’s unit. Sources: Labour Contract Law, article 4, wording; Company Law 2023, article 17; Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 2024 statistical bulletin; Zhang, Yang, He and Wang, Frontiers in Psychiatry 16, 2025, on the danwei system.

Sources. Labour Contract Law of the People’s Republic of China, adopted 29 June 2007, in force 1 January 2008, amended 28 December 2012: articles 4, 8, 39 and 80. Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on the application of law in labour dispute cases, Fa Shi [2001] No. 14, in force 30 April 2001: article 19. Interpretation (I) of the Supreme People’s Court on the application of law in labour dispute cases, Fa Shi [2020] No. 26, in force 1 January 2021: articles 44 and 50. Company Law of the People’s Republic of China, revised 29 December 2023, in force 1 July 2024: articles 17 and 68. Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 2024 statistical bulletin on human resources and social security, 2025. Supreme People’s Court, work report of 8 March 2025, and judicial statistics for January to September 2025, released 22 October 2025. Original wording of the provisions cited: article 4, fourth paragraph, 「用人单位应当将直接涉及劳动者切身利益的规章制度和重大事项决定公示，或者告知劳动者」; Interpretation (I), article 50, 「通过民主程序制定的规章制度，不违反国家法律、行政法规及政策规定，并已向劳动者公示的，可以作为确定双方权利义务的依据」.

What this newsletter does. Corporate, tax and trust law across Asia and the CIS, with the cultural reading that explains why each rule exists. Written by the people who work in those countries, for the people who decide from somewhere else.

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This article is general information, not legal advice; it reflects the law as at the date shown.

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