When Ma Jixing contracted the fatal lung disease pneumoconiosis his former employer refused to pay any compensation claiming Ma had never worked for the company

Amendments to China’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Occupational Diseases (职业病防治法), approved by the National People’s Congress on 31 December 2011, will go some way to ease the ordeal workers face in getting diagnosed and compensated for occupational disease, according to a leading labour rights activist.

An accident at a chemical plant in eastern China that killed more than a dozen workers was nothing out of the ordinary in a country infamous for its lack of workplace safety.

Miner He Quangui is ready to die. Often hit by coughing fits and breathlessness, he is one of hundreds of thousands in China who have contracted silicosis from working in the country's gold, coal or silver mines. And there is no safe cure.

A former miner with third-stage pneumoconiosis tells Han Dongfang about the terrible cost of working in the lead and zinc mines of Sichuan for two decades with no protection from the clouds of deadly mineral dust enveloping him.

In a bid to gain compensation and highlight the workplace health and safety obligations of local governments, a group of 75 former miners and their families from remote villages in Sichuan have filed an administrative lawsuit against a local county health department for dereliction of duty.

A job applicant is suing a Chongqing subsidiary of Taiwanese electronics giant, Foxconn, after the company allegedly rescinded an offer of employment in its purchasing department when a medical test indicated the applicant had a tuberculosis infection. The Legal Daily said it is believed to be China’s first case of employment discrimination based on tuberculosis.

China’s top work safety watch dog has threatened close down dangerously polluting gold mines after discovering that 95 percent of the mines it surveyed violated national safety standards regarding dust emissions. The State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) Tuesday ordered state-owned gold mines to take concrete measures to improve safety and curb emissions by August 2012 or face closure. Inspections of 41 gold mines by SAWS found “very severe” levels of harmful dust emissions which invariably cause pneumoconiosis and other fatal lung diseases.

In a potentially significant development in the fight against the occupational disease epidemic that is sweeping China, the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) is requiring employers to keep health records of all their employees who are exposed to health hazards.

A deadly explosion at a Chinese factory making iPads for Apple has focused attention on lax industrial safety standards that continue to plague many Chinese workers, while raising supply chain risks in the high-end electronics sector.