When a person gets paid for a job in China, they naturally have a work relationship with an organization or a person. To clarify legally whether the work relationship is an employment relationship or not and what kind of employment relationship it belongs to is the foundation of the rights and obligations under the employment legal relationship and answering “what should I do?” when disputes arise.

The series of questions and answers in this chapter mainly involve the basic principles of employment relation, collective employment contract, the distinction between employment relation and contractor relation, the types of employment relations, fixed-term employment contract, employment contract that ends at completion of a task (assignment contract), the characteristics of casual employee, identification of general work hours and irregular work hours, volunteer worker and employment relationship, the protection of child labor, family-member employee, employment relationship related to employee over retirement age, the identification and invalidity of labor dispatch, labor outsourcing and representative offices for foreign enterprises, as well as the civil servant, etc.

This chapter also lists some special employment relations and common types of contractor relations.