Chinese lawyer raises legal bar

Zhou Litai is a self-taught legal eagle, a working-class maverick who is almost single-handedly forcing China's judicial system to create a set of precedents for factory workers.

Braving death threats and a court system where judgments are commonly sold to the highest bidder, Mr. Zhou has managed to win more than half of the 100 workers' compensation lawsuits he's filed, culminating in judgments that are sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars. That's serious money in a nation where the average urbanite earns less than $50 a day.

His high-profile crusade for worker's rights has earned him invitations to international labor conferences, and, more significantly, speaking tours at China's leading law schools.

Zhou's successes are testament to the nascent but growing awareness of workers' rights and an increasingly independent judiciary. In recent years, the government has launched campaigns to stamp out judicial corruption and raise standards. Many judges have undergone retraining because of their poor understanding of the law.

"It's not that there are no laws," says the gruff former factory worker from Sichuan. "The government just doesn't enforce them."

For the past four years, Zhou has fought in China's courts for the rights of the migrant workers who have helped turn Shenzhen from a fishing village bordering Hong Kong into an economic powerhouse.

Every day, hundreds of young men and women from China's hardscrabble villages arrive here, looking for work. With competition fierce, workers accept jobs in sometimes-dangerous and unsanitary conditions that lead to an estimated 10,000 injuries a year. While China's laws mandate worker compensation and insurance, many companies don't comply, and enforcement is lax because local governments are afraid to upset those foreign investors who could relocate their factories, taking jobs and tax revenue elsewhere.

Zhou has "contributed to improving China's insurance law," said Hao Liya, a presiding judge in the Shenzhen People's Intermediate Court, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

"He cares about people no one else cares about," says He Qinglian, a noted Chinese economist. "They've been abandoned by their bosses and the government. His work has a lot of value."

His work is cut out for him in Shenzhen, China's experiment in capitalism. Low taxes and cheap labor have lured factories from Hong Kong and Taiwan. There are 7 million residents here, some 20,000 factories, towering skyscrapers, and the highest per capita income in China.

But conditions can be dismal. Some workers labor for 12 or more hours a day, seven days a week, and are paid less than the Shenzhen minimum wage of $50 per month. Liu Kaiming, head of the Institute for Contemporary Social Survey in Shenzhen, says government records show at least 31 work-related injuries a day in the city's factories.

Zhou hangs his shingle in the grimy village of Longgang, about an hour from Shenzhen. Inside a rented four-story building that is Zhou's home and office live some 36 men - eight to a room, two to a bunk - who were injured at work and have nowhere to go Days are spent watching TV, playing Ping Pong on the roof, and eating home-cooked meals prepared by Zhou's sister.

One of Zhou's earlier clients, Fu Sulin, lost his arm at an electronics factory three years ago. With Zhou's help, he eventually won a lawsuit for $20,000 - a sum that could help him start his own business. But in the meantime, he has decided to stay and help out with other lawsuits as a paralegal.

Zhou grew up in a poor village in Sichuan province, and, after serving three years in the Army, he worked as a porter and later in a factory. Tired of dead-end jobs, he spent nights studying law and eventually passed national boards in 1986. A lawsuit brought Zhou to Shenzhen. A man from his hometown was run over by a delivery truck. Zhou proved that the company had liability. Another case against a factory quickly followed, and then more.

Zhou now has plans to expand to other cities. Critics charge that he is only in it for the money, but Zhou counters that he needs the earnings to continue his fight.

Nevertheless, no one else has dared take up the mantle Zhou wears. In part, because there are so few lawyers in China - roughly 110,000 for a population of well over 1 million. (The American Bar Association alone has 400,000 members.) And although Zhou has won many cases, his fees are relatively low, and he sometimes doesn't collect his 20 percent, because factories refuse to pay judgments or clients skip town.

"Zhou Litai is the beginning of a nongovernmental organization," says Hong Kong-based labor activist Han Dongfang. While local governments in China seem more interested in increasing foreign investment than in protecting workers' rights, Zhou's high-profile campaign has had an impact by raising awareness with the public and the central government - in often dramatic fashion.

For instance, Mr. Fu's boss locked him up in the factory after he demanded compensation for his workplace injury. He snuck out a note that was delivered to Zhou just as he was being interviewed by Chinese journalists.

With a camera crew in tow, Zhou secured Fu's release. Despite the high drama, it took 18 months to win the case.

Officials at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security acknowledge that conditions can be appalling, but they say it's an inevitable stage in the process of China's modernization drive. "We'll not stand idle at such phenomena," said Dong Ping, director for labor disputes at the ministry, according to Xinhua.