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Human Resources and Payroll in China 2016-2017 (5th Edition) -
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After a year without awritten contract since the date of employment, the employer and the employee
will be deemed to have concluded a non-fixed-term labor contract. The employee can be entitled
to double wages for the period of more than one month but less than one year.
One exception to the abovementioned rules is part timework, where an oral agreement is considered
sufficient, as stipulated in Article 69 of the PRC Labor Contract Law.
Labor Contract in Chinese recommended
The question of which language a labor contract should be written in is seemingly a trivial one, but
it has the potential to render even the best written contracts unenforceable. While monolingual
foreign language contracts are accepted by Chinese courts, the foreign language contract must
be translated by institutions that are approved by the courts, on a basis unknown to the plaintiff.
Bilingual contracts contain their own problems, principally in determining which language will
be the controlling language and in ensuring uniformity in the translation. More often than not, a
bilingual contract that does not specify which language is the controlling version will automatically
default to Chinese as the authoritative language. Alternatively, in the event that both languages in
a bilingual contract each claim to be the controlling version, the Chinese will again be accorded
primacy, even though the Contract Law provides that the contract should be interpreted according
to the aimof the contract. Foreign investors are therefore advised to have a Chinese version contract
for the purpose of legal certainty.
The Term of the Labor Contract
1. Fixed-term Labor Contract
2. Non-fixed Term Contract
3. Job Contract
1. Fixed-term Labor Contract
The fixed-term contract creates an employer-employee relationship for a fixed length of time. It can
be used for part-time or full-time work.
Note: The employment relationship is deemed to have started from the first day that the employee works at
the company, not from the date of signature of the contract. As long as the employee can prove that they have
physically been working for the company for over a month prior to signing an employment contract, this will be
sufficient tomake a successful claimagainst the company. The simplest piece of evidence proving this will be the
receipt of salary.
To effectively lower the future risk of labor disputes, employers should build up reliable mechanisms to ensure the
prompt conclusion of labor contracts.