Disputes with a Chinese Employer, University or Institution

If your salary stopped, or your contract ended without warning

You signed a contract with a company, a school or a university in China. The salary stopped arriving, or the contract was ended mid-term, or you were told in June there would be no renewal in September, or someone in the HR office is still holding your passport. You are either sitting in a Chinese city trying to work out who to complain to, or already home in another country wondering whether the money is simply gone.

It is usually not gone. Foreign employees in China have substantially the same wage, termination and severance protections as Chinese employees, and the forum that hears these claims — the labour dispute arbitration commission — costs nothing to use. The obstacles are that every filing, hearing and exhibit is in Chinese, that the deadline is short and unforgiving, and that a claim brought in the wrong forum against the wrong legal entity is rejected without being examined.

I act for foreign employees and academic staff against Chinese employers: private and foreign-invested companies, training schools, hospitals, research institutes and public universities. I work with you in English; the filings and the hearing are conducted in Chinese on your behalf.

First question: are you inside Chinese labour law at all?

This decides everything else, and it has nothing to do with the wording of your contract.

Chinese courts and arbitration commissions recognise an employment relationship between a foreign national and a Chinese employer where the foreigner was lawfully authorised to work — in practice, where you held a valid Foreigner's Work Permit together with a work-type residence permit, or where you hold permanent residence. Since 1 April 2017 the former Alien Employment Permit and Foreign Expert Certificate have been merged into the single Foreigner's Work Permit system, so what matters is the permit notification letter and permit record issued to you and your employer — not a job offer, and not a title. Judicial Interpretation II on labour dispute cases, in force since 1 September 2025, addresses the recognition of these relationships directly.

If you had that authorisation, you are inside the system: unpaid wages, overtime, severance, damages for unlawful dismissal and the return of your documents are all claimable much as they would be for a Chinese colleague. The general outline of those rights is set out here.

Where the picture changes

If you worked without a work permit — on a tourist, business or student visa, or for an employer other than the one named on your permit — the long-standing position is that no labour relationship is recognised. The consequence is serious: the labour arbitration route, and with it severance, statutory dismissal damages and double-wage claims, is generally closed.

That does not always mean no claim at all. Work you actually performed may still be recoverable in the ordinary civil courts as a claim on a services contract, for the fee you were promised. It is a different case in a different forum, it is slower, it carries none of the labour-law uplifts, and it puts your own irregular status on the record — a decision to take deliberately rather than in a panic. I will tell you in the first conversation which of these two tracks you are on, because it changes the value of the claim by a large factor.

Two clocks are already running

Most cases I have to decline on the merits are cases where someone waited.

Labour arbitration: one year. You must file within one year of the date you knew, or should have known, that your rights had been infringed. For a dismissal that starts the day the employment ended; for a refusal to renew, when the contract expired.

Unpaid wages are a partial exception. While the employment relationship is still alive, a claim for wage arrears is not cut off by the one-year rule. Once it ends, the ordinary one-year period applies and runs from the termination date — so the protection disappears exactly when most people finally decide to act.

Labour inspection: two years. A complaint to the labour and social security inspection authorities runs on a separate two-year window from the date of the violation. Someone who has missed the arbitration deadline may still have an administrative route, and it is worth checking before concluding that nothing can be done.

Some claims expire month by month. Certain heads of claim are treated as accruing monthly, so the earliest months fall away first while you are deciding what to do. A few months of hesitation quietly reduces the recoverable amount.

If you are near the one-year line, say so in your first message. Filing to stop the clock is a small piece of work; reviving a time-barred claim is usually impossible.

Labour arbitration is compulsory, and it is free

You cannot start in court. For a labour dispute, arbitration before the competent arbitration commission is a mandatory first stage, and a claim filed directly with a court is refused. Arbitration itself carries no filing fee.

1. Identify the correct respondent. The name above the door is frequently not the employing entity. Training-school brands, campus subsidiaries and university-affiliated companies are common traps. A company's registered name and unified social credit code can be checked free on the national enterprise credit information publicity system; public institutions are registered separately. Naming the wrong entity wastes months.
2. Choose the commission. Jurisdiction generally lies where the employer is registered or where the contract was performed, and the employee ordinarily has the choice. Where those differ, the choice is tactical.
3. File. The application, statement of claim and evidence list go in in Chinese, with your passport, the contract and proof of the employer's identity. The commission decides whether to accept within five days.
4. The employer answers, ordinarily within ten days of service.
5. Hearing. Evidence is examined and cross-examined. Digital material — WeChat, DingTalk, email — is routinely challenged, and how it was preserved matters more than what it says.
6. Award. Normally due within forty-five days of acceptance, extendable by fifteen with approval. A straightforward wage claim can conclude in a few months; a contested dismissal takes longer.
7. After the award. Smaller claims for wages, work-injury medical costs and severance below a statutory threshold produce a “final” award: the employee may still sue in court within fifteen days of receiving it, while the employer can only apply to set it aside on narrow grounds. Other awards may be taken to the basic people's court by either side within fifteen days. The court fee for a labour dispute case is RMB 10.
8. Enforcement. Winning and being paid are separate events. If the employer does not comply you apply to the court for enforcement, which must be done within two years. The court can trace and freeze accounts, restrict the legal representative's spending and travel, and list the company as a judgment defaulter.

Free channels you should know about first

The labour and social security inspection authorities accept wage complaints at no cost, and 12333 is the national human resources and social security telephone line. For a small, documented, uncontested arrear against a solvent employer, that can be enough — and if that is your situation I will say so rather than open a file. What the free channels do not do is conduct a contested hearing for you in a language you cannot read.

Two further points of leverage: where the labour authorities have ordered payment and the employer still refuses, the law provides for additional damages on top of the arrears; and deliberate evasion — moving assets or absconding to avoid paying wages — is a criminal offence in China, not merely a breach of contract.

The four situations that come up most

Unpaid or partially paid salary

Wages must be paid on a fixed date each month, and on termination the balance is payable in a lump sum at settlement. Common variants: the final month withheld as an informal penalty for resigning; a “performance deduction” that appears in no contract; a salary reduced without a signed variation; base pay made but the housing allowance, airfare or completion bonus withheld.

Unlawful termination

An employer cannot dismiss at will. Dismissal must rest on a statutory ground — serious misconduct, material breach of properly adopted internal rules, incapacity after training or redeployment — and the procedure matters as much as the reason. Where a dismissal is unlawful you can generally elect between continued performance of the contract and statutory damages set at twice the severance figure. Severance is one month's average wage per year of service, with six months to a year counting as a full year and under six months as half a month, subject to a statutory cap where your salary exceeds three times the local average wage.

Non-renewal at the end of a fixed term

This is the one most foreign staff get wrong, because in many countries an expiring contract generates nothing. In China, where a fixed-term contract expires and it is the employer that declines to renew, severance is generally payable; where the employer offers renewal on terms no worse than before and the employee refuses, it generally is not. What was actually said in June, in writing, therefore decides the claim — which is why “we won't be renewing you” in a WeChat message is worth preserving.

Passport, work permit and release documents withheld

No employer, school or university in China has the right to hold your passport. Retaining another person's exit-entry documents is prohibited, and it can be reported to the exit-entry administration department of the public security bureau. Related pressure points: the employer keeping the work permit record so you cannot transfer to a new sponsor, and refusing to issue the termination certificate and complete the transfer formalities the law requires — documents a new employer will want before a fresh work permit can be processed. This is often the most urgent part of a case, and the part most readily resolved by a properly worded demand from a Chinese lawyer.

When the employer is a university, hospital or public institution

Foreign academic staff are a large share of this work, and a public university is not simply a large company.

It will still be there. Public institutions rarely dissolve or disappear with the assets. Collection risk — the factor that destroys most wage claims against small training schools — is low. That changes the economics considerably, and it is the main reason a claim against a university is often worth bringing even where the amount is moderate.

Nobody in the room can settle. Authority is split between the human resources office, the international office, the faculty and the institution's leadership. The person you have been arguing with by email often has no power to agree anything. Expect slower movement and fewer informal decisions.

The forum question is genuinely more complicated. Public institutions engage staff under engagement contracts, and disputes with them are broadly channelled through the labour arbitration system, but separate personnel-dispute arrangements exist for some categories and localities. Getting this wrong costs a filing, so it is one of the first things I check.

Read what the contract incorporates. Foreign teacher contracts routinely refer to a staff handbook, teaching regulations or campus rules. Internal rules bind you only if they were properly adopted and actually made known to you; a rule in a Chinese-language handbook you were never given is not a safe basis for dismissal.

Early-departure penalties are mostly unenforceable. Clauses saying that a teacher who resigns before the end of term forfeits salary or “owes” the school a month or two of pay are common and largely ineffective under Chinese employment law: liquidated damages may be imposed on an employee in only two narrow situations, a training service-period agreement and a non-compete. A clause outside those categories does not become valid because you signed it.

Housing and airfare are contract terms. Campus accommodation, return airfare and settling-in allowances are obligations, not favours, and they are claimable. Losing the apartment on the day of termination is also an eviction question, better raised in the same demand than months later.

You have already left China. Is it too late?

Usually not, and this is the most common reason people give up unnecessarily.

Your claim does not die because you flew home, and it does not die because the work permit was cancelled — what matters is your status during the period in which the claim arose. You need not be physically in China to be a claimant; a Chinese lawyer can file and appear for you.

What you must organise is authority to act. A power of attorney signed outside China by a party without domicile in China must be formally certified before a Chinese tribunal will accept it: notarised where you signed it, and then either legalised by the Chinese embassy or consulate or — since the Hague Apostille Convention entered into force for China on 7 November 2023 — apostilled, where your country is a party. Documents in another language need certified Chinese translation. In some countries this file takes weeks to assemble, which is the practical reason that someone with eleven months of the limitation period already gone is in more trouble than they realise.

Settle these before you leave, if you still can: keep the Chinese mobile number and WeChat account alive, export chat history to a computer rather than relying on screenshots, download bank statements and personal income tax records, and keep a Chinese bank account open. Receiving money after a successful case is a separate administrative exercise, and far easier with an account that still functions. If you are still in China and worried about whether a pending dispute could affect your departure, that is a separate question worth asking early.

Evidence to gather before doing anything else

Cases are won on documents, and documents get harder to obtain the longer you wait. In rough order of value:

• The contract — every version and every language, including any clause on which language controls.
• Work authorisation records — the work permit notification letter, the permit record, and the residence permit page of your passport. Photograph all of it now, whoever holds the originals.
• Bank statements showing salary credits. A tribunal takes seriously a statement issued and stamped by the bank, not an app screenshot. Obtain it while the account still works.
• Personal income tax records. What your employer declared and withheld for you is strong independent proof of both the employment relationship and the real salary figure — particularly where the written contract understates it.
• Social insurance and housing fund contribution records, where applicable.
• Messages in original form. WeChat and DingTalk exchanges with HR, a dean or a manager are often the best evidence of a dismissal, a promise or a refusal to renew — and the evidence most often excluded. Do not reinstall the app or delete the account, and export the history properly. Have voice messages transcribed while you can still identify the speaker.
• Proof of the work you did. For teaching staff: timetables, course assignments, grading records, student rosters, campus email. These matter when an employer denies you held the role you say you held.
• Anything written that ended the relationship — termination notice, non-renewal letter, a resignation you were asked to sign, a settlement or clearance document, especially if it carries the employer's chop.
• The employer's identity details — registered name, unified social credit code, registered address, legal representative.

Mistakes that cost people their claim

• Resigning “for personal reasons”. If you are leaving because you were not paid, or because insurance was never enrolled, the written resignation must state that statutory ground. A resignation citing personal reasons is generally treated as voluntary and can extinguish a severance claim worth months of salary. This one sentence is the most expensive mistake I see.
• Signing a clearance or settlement document before the money arrives. A paper confirming that all sums are settled, signed against a promise of a transfer next week, is very hard to unwind.
• Relying on a verbal promise and keeping no record of it.
• Letting the one-year period run while negotiating. Negotiation does not reliably stop the clock.
• Handing over the passport, or leaving originals with the employer.
• Suing the brand rather than the entity that signed.
• Treating the dispute and your visa as one problem. They run on separate tracks. A cancelled work permit does not pause your residence position, and overstaying while a claim is pending creates a second and worse problem. Deal with status first.
• Going to court first. It will be sent back.

If you want the wider picture of how these protections fit together before you decide anything, this overview covers the ground in general terms.

Fees, and why a wage claim cannot be taken on contingency

I will put this plainly, because it is the point on which foreign clients are most often misled.

Under the Chinese rules on lawyers' fees, contingency or “no win, no fee” arrangements are prohibited in certain categories of case, and claims for the payment of labour remuneration are one of them. A Chinese lawyer offering to take your unpaid-salary case for a percentage of the recovery is not complying with those rules. Where an engagement mixes wage arrears with other claims, I charge the whole matter on a fixed or hourly basis rather than looking for a way around the restriction.

In practice that means we assess at the outset whether the likely recovery justifies the cost, and I tell you if it does not. A foreign employee's case carries cost items a domestic one does not: certified Chinese translation of the contract and evidence, notarisation and apostille or consular legalisation of the power of attorney in your own country, and an asset search if enforcement becomes necessary. Arbitration is free and the court fee for a labour dispute case is RMB 10; the real expenditure is professional time and document formalities. You receive a written estimate broken down by stage before anything is filed.

What I do not take on

Declining work that cannot be done economically is part of an honest answer.

• Visa and work permit applications, renewals and processing as an administrative service. That is agency and HR work, not a dispute.
• Cases where a free channel is genuinely sufficient. If what you need is the labour inspection office and a demand letter for a small, undisputed arrear from a solvent employer, I will point you there rather than open a file.
• Small claims against employers with nothing to collect from. A dissolved training school with no traceable assets produces an award that is never satisfied. Where the arithmetic does not work I will say so before you spend money, not after.
• Claims that are clearly time-barred with no administrative route left.
• Cash-in-hand work with no permit, no contract and no records, where the amount is small. There may be no viable claim, and pursuing it can expose you to consequences of your own.
• Any request that depends on influencing an official or a tribunal.

Starting a case

Useful in a first message: who the employer is and whether it is a company or a public institution; the dates employment started and ended; what is owed, or what was done; whether you held a work permit; and where you are now. If you have the contract and the last payslip or bank record, attach them.

I will tell you whether you are within the limitation period, which forum the case belongs in, what the claim is realistically worth, and what it would cost to bring. If the answer is that you should use a free government channel, or that the case is not worth bringing, that is the answer you will get.

Joy Wang (Wang Zhe) is a PRC-licensed attorney at Yingke Law Firm, Beijing, licence number 11101202411865284, working in English and Chinese.

This page is general information on Chinese law and procedure. It is not legal advice on your situation and does not create a lawyer-client relationship.