Comparison of Legal System of Occupational Safety and Health between Mainland China and Taiwan

Mainland China and Taiwan have both completed revisions of their occupational safety and health laws during the last few years, and both address similar occupational safety and health areas, including such supervisory and management tasks as production safety management, hazardous chemical products, education & training, and accident prevention. This article provides a brief introduction to the supervisory organizations, legal frameworks, and legal responsibilities relating to health and safety in Mainland China and Taiwan, and summarizes the focal points of these most recent revisions of occupational safety and health laws in Mainland China and Taiwan. The article finally proposes some key guidelines concerning fields connected with occupational safety and health, and these guidelines may provide countries or companies planning to enter this market—the world’s largest manufacturing market—with response methods and guidance.


Introduction
To a certain degree, occupational safety and health (OSH) management prior consent is a positive indicator of socioeconomic development. In recent years, Mainland China and Taiwan have both revised their occupational safety and health laws. Acting first, Taiwan revised its Occupational Safety and Health Act on July 3, 2013, which was enlarged to apply to all industries [1]. For its part, in the emergency management department. After the transformation of the armed police forestry units, together with the emergency rescue teams such as safety production, as the comprehensive standing emergency backbone force, it will be managed by the "Emergency Management Department". The State Administration of Work Safety will not retain it.
The foregoing safety production supervision and management agencies are collectively referred to as "Emergency Management Department" and, in accordance with law, must undertake three "essential" responsibilities, which are "management of the industry must ensure safety, management of services must ensure safety, and management of production must ensure safety" [2] [6].

Prevention Law for Occupational Disease
The Prevention Law for Occupational Disease has been in force from May 1, 2002. With regard to the agency in charge of supervision and management of occupational disease, hierarchical management shall be performed by central and local government agencies in accordance with the regulations of the Prevention Law for Occupational Disease; In terms of administrative relationships, Mainland China has adopted concurrent supervision by health supervision agencies and other agencies. Although the safety supervision agency performs supervision in conjunction with the health and labor agencies, the supervisory inspection and judgment powers of the two types of agencies must be undertaken by the safety supervision agency [5].
Because of this, a summary of the two foregoing statutes reveals that the safety supervision agency is the competent authority in charge of production safety and occupational disease control supervisory inspection, and it can be said that Mainland China's occupational safety and health supervision and management work is chiefly the responsibility of the safety supervision agency.

Legal Framework of the Occupational Safety and Health System
In accordance with legal practice, Mainland China's laws governing occupational safety and health include special laws and related laws; laws specifically addressing work safety can be classified as 8 types [7]: 1) General safety category:  Although the Administrative Supervision Law of the People's Republic of China currently provides for the punishment of civil servants [11], the most specific regulations concern the area of production safety, and express the greatest emphasis, but there appears to be redundant regulations in this area.

Civil Responsibility
Paragraph 1, Article 111 of the Production Safety Law specifies that production and business operation entities are responsible for providing compensation: "If production safety accidents occurring at production and business operation entities caused death or injury, or third-party property losses, they must there responsibility for compensation in accordance with law; …" According to the meeting and explanation of these clauses, as long as a production safety accident occurs at a production and business operation entity, causing death or injury, that production and business operation entity must bear responsibility for compensation. In other words, the precondition for a production and business operation entity assuming responsibility for an accident is that an accident has occurred (apart from natural accidents), and has caused the death or injury of personnel, or third party losses, in which case the entity must assume responsibility.
In addition, if injury or death occurs in a production safety accident, three types of compensation may be obtained in accordance with the law: work-related injury insurance compensation, compensation provided in accordance with the general principles of the Civil Code, and accidental death or injury compensation per se. These types of compensation are not mutually inclusive, and should not be adjusted even when overlapping; the employer's responsibility is not lessened even when an accident has been caused by the workers' negligence. In view of Mainland China's use of this type of compensation system including both punitive and compensatory provisions, production and business operation entities in all industries are clearly aware of the great cost of accidents, to which administrative penalties may be added. The skyrocketing cost of dealing with accidents has motivated a great increase in production safety consciousness among production and business operation entities. in violation of regulations", "crime of major labor safety accident", "crime of Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology major safety accident in a mass activity", "crime of fire safety accident", "crime of forcing workers to perform", "crime of employing child labor to engage in hazardous work" and "refusal to pay workers work compensation"; the minimum basic punishment in these cases is 3 years, and the maximum punishment in the case of severe offenses is 7 years, which makes it imperative to exercise great caution [6] [10] [12].

Inspection Organization
At present, occupational safety and health inspections in Taiwan are chiefly the responsibility of "labor inspection organizations" and "commissioned inspection organizations". Article 5 of the Labor Inspection Act prescribes that "labor in- fied as a "hybrid centralized" management model [14].

Legal Framework of the Occupational Safety and Health System
Taiwan's occupational safety and health laws and regulations were originally in-

Chief Laws Concerning Occupational Safety and Health
Taiwan Labor Standards Law [16] and Occupational Safety and Health Act respectively govern supervisory and management matters, and provide general regulations concerning the three statutes' "supervisory and management" tasks.
However, while these laws have regulations concerning inspection organizations, personnel, and procedures, the Labor Inspection Act provides unified regulations [13]; the following is a brief explanation. This Law has become the most important law protecting the basic wages, working hours, and labor conditions of workers in Taiwan. However, this article will perform a hybrid comparison and investigation addressing only those sections of the Labor Standards Law concerning "supervision and inspection". Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology

Labor Standards Law
Taiwan's Labor Inspection Act exclusively prescribes the legality of labor supervisory inspections, and has consistently listed occupational safety and health supervision and management matters as among the most important of key labor inspection directions over the years.
The labor inspection methods implemented under this Act include three types: "voluntary employer inspections", "commissioned inspections by designated organizations" and "functional inspections by inspection organizations." Among these, "commissioned inspections by designated organizations" refer to safety inspections of hazardous machinery or equipment, such as boilers, pressure containers, cranes, and lifts, conducted by an administrative agency, academic organization, state-run enterprise organization, or nonprofit juridical person designated by the competent authority. Although this system has been effective in relieving pressure from the government's lack of inspection manpower, it has faced developmental difficulties in recent years. These difficulties have included such questions as whether to expand applicability, how to secure funding sources, and how to strengthen coordination between commissioning organizations and inspection organizations, etc.
In order to boost supervision and management performance, Taiwan's Labor Inspection Act also specifies that, apart from review or inspection of hazardous work premises, inspection of hazardous machinery or equipment, and occupational accident prevention inspections, labor inspectors may not notify business units in advance when inspections will be implemented; Employers must post inspection results in readily-visible places in violating premises for at least 7 days; Furthermore, the results of labor complaints must also be announced, and

Legal Responsibility
In Taiwan, if a business unit is in violation of the Labor Safety and Health Act, the labor inspection organization or safety monitoring organization may uniformly punish that company in accordance with law; If a case involves criminal responsibility, it must be referred for prosecution, and the workers involved may also demand monetary compensation or other compensation responsibilities from the business unit. The following is an analysis of this OSH system of Taiwan from the perspective of administrative, civil, and criminal aspects:

Administrative Responsibility
This is specified in articles 36 and 40 -49 of Taiwan's Occupational Safety and Health Act, and articles 27 -29 and 34 -36 of the Labor Inspection Act, in which punishments include "cessation of work", "suspension of business", "fines", "confiscation" and "other necessary measures". The subjects of punishment are limited to private entities, namely employers, certification, monitoring, medical, and consulting service organizations, and training units, etc. With regard to the punishment of illegal behavior on the part of civil servants, the Public Functionaries Discipline Act governs such punishments [17], and the Occupational Safety and Health Act contains no redundant regulations concerning this aspect.

Civil Responsibility
Because the Occupational Safety and Health Act likewise do not contain any special regulations governing civil compensation responsibility, such regulations must be obtained from the Civil Code and Occupational Accident Labor Protection Act [17] [18]. Because Taiwan has adopted presumption of negligence liability, Article 7 of the Occupational Accident Labor Protection Act prescribes that "the employer must bear responsibility for compensation when workers are injured in occupational accidents. However, this restriction shall not apply if the employer can prove that it was not negligent." [19].

Criminal Responsibility
According to articles 40 and 41 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act and Article 34 of the Labor Inspection Act, actions specifically violating occupational safety and health regulations shall be punished, and punishments may include imprisonment for less than 3 years or 1 year, detention, and fines.

Comparison of Differences in Points of Revision of the Occupational Safety and Health Legal Systems and Their Supervisory Matters
Generally speaking, the occupational safety and health legal systems of Mainland Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology First, Article 1 of Chapter 1 General Principles clarifies the legislative purpose of the Production Safety Law as "strengthening production safety work" and provides the special explanation that production safety is an invariable requirement for the realization of scientific development and the safe development concept, where production safety is not only an economic problem, but also a social issue.
In addition, this revised content also emphasizes that "production safety work should be human-centered", where this is the first time that the human-centered concept has appeared in legislative form in Mainland China. This substantively emphasizes the importance of "persons" in production safety; in the explanation, "persons" refers to the general public, and "-centered" refers to fundamental benefit. This generally implies that production safety work should be based on individuals, and place human life and property foremost, which is the central concept of production safety work.

2) Scope
The first paragraph of Article 2 of the Law specifies that "This Law is applicable to production safety at units engaging in production operating activities", while subsequent paragraphs explain exceptions. This revision makes special exceptions of "nuclear and radiation safety, special equipment safety" because the

3) Production safety responsibility
This revision emphasizes that the "production safety responsibility system" must clarify the persons involved at each work position, and must also clarify the scope of responsibilities that each work position. The use of legislation to specify the duties of production safety management organizations and production safety management personnel enhances their work status and authority, which can increase the sense of responsibility among relevant management personnel, and encourage them perform their duties with even greater vigor; it can also cause other relevant departments and managers to be conscious of the importance and duties of the safety management organization and safety management personnel.
Because it may be difficult to see the effects of safety management work, which however requires real economic support, and many aspects of the safety management process may affect the progress of normal work, to ensure that safety management personnel do not lack status, power, or sufficient compensation (the "three lacks"), which would severely affect their performance of their duties and lawful rights, the law emphasizes real protection for the performance of duties by safety management personnel.

4) Governance to eliminate the threat of production safety accidents
The intent of this clause is to ensure the faithful implementation of accident risk inspection and elimination work, and it implies that diligent efforts to eliminate risks ahead of time is the key to the prevention of production safety accidents. In order to further highlight the status of accident risk inspection and elimination work in the production safety management work of production and business operation entities, better standards should be provided for accident risk inspection and elimination tasks. As a consequence, the revision specifically provides newly-added regulations governing the basic system for inspection and elimination of accident risks.

5) Regulations concerning mandatory supervision and management measures
During actual implementation, some production and business operation entities with major accident risk have suffered accidents due to refusal to implement in accordance with law relevant decisions made by agencies responsible for production safety supervision and management duties. When there is a real risk of accident, it is difficult for decisions concerning application of court-ordered compulsory enforcement to avoid effective emergency requirements intended to Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology avoid accidents. Objectively, supervisory agencies must be given the authority to implement administrative compulsory enforcement as needed, which will ensure that they can adopt effective measures in real-time and can compel production and business operation entities to implement the decisions; they thus must be given on-site emergency disposal powers needed to avoid the severe consequences of accidents. However, because abuse of the foregoing power will have a great impact on production and business operation entities, severe restrictions must be placed on the preconditions and implementation procedures in this clause.

6) Regulations concerning the establishment of illegal behavior information repositories
Addressing situations in which very large and ultra-large companies, especially listed companies, "fear exposure more than fines", this revision expressly adds regulations establishing an illegal behavior "blacklist system", and clearly specifies that agencies responsible for production safety supervision and management duties shall establish production safety legal behavior information repositories, record information concerning the illegal production safety behavior of production and business operation entities, should publicly announce severe illegal behavior, and notify the industry competent authority competent authority and investment competent authority, national land and resources competent authority, securities supervision and management agency, and financial institutions connected with the case.

Key Points of Revisions in Taiwan's Legal System
Legislative advances have made Taiwan's Occupational Safety and Health Act an

1) Subjects of protection
During the early part of the legislative process, this Act took "laborers employed to engage in work and receiving wages" as its legislative subject, and sought to ensure "everyone enjoys a healthy and safe working environment" as a right reflecting the spirit of international conventions concerning economic, social, and cultural rights. The Act therefore changed its subject from "labors" to "workers", which ensured that laborers employed to engage in work and receiving wages no longer formed the sole subjects of this Act's protection. With regard to the implications of the use of "workers", Article 2 of this Act states that "workers refers to laborers, self-employed workers, and other persons engaging Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology in labor under the direction or supervision of the workplace's statutory responsible person." Apart from hired workers, this expands the scope of protection as far as "self-employed workers", vocational training organization trainees, and even volunteers engaging in labor.

2) Scope
While chemical products, and chemical products with prioritized management, the revision has added the requirement that manufacturers, importers, suppliers, and employers handling hazardous chemical products must provide or post safety data sheets and prepare checklists, adopt commonsense preventive measures, and assess risk grade and adopt grading management measures in accordance with the degree of hazard, state of dispersal, and amount used. To strengthen supervision, petrochemical firms engaged in petroleum refining must regularly perform process safety assessment and report results to the labor inspection organization for filing.

Comparison of Occupational Safety and Health Supervision and Management, and Recommendations
The two basic statutes underpinning their respective occupational safety and health system and examined in this article refer to Taiwan's occupational Safety and Health Act and Mainland China's Production Safety Law. Taiwan's Occupational Safety and Health Act, which prescribes a based on employer responsibility, contains a total of 6 chapters and 55 articles; excluding the chapters concerning general principles and supplementary provisions, the remaining four chapters are: Health and Safety Facilities, Health and Safety Management, Supervision, and Inspection and Penalties; The framework based on Mainland China's Production Safety Law, takes production safety as its central theme, and employs "human-centered" as its core concept. This Law contains 7 chapters and 114 articles. Apart from those portions identical or similar to sections of Taiwan's Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Production Safety Law also includes two chapters respectively concerning the rights and duties of working personnel and first aid, investigation and handling in the case of production safety accidents (see the comparison of legal systems in Table 1. This comparison is in fact very meaningful. To make a comparison of the number of statutes in the occupational safety and health regulatory system of Mainland China and Taiwan and the supervisory and management matters in the content of the statutes, we can see differences in the major content of Mainland China's Production Safety Law and Prevention Law for Occupational Disease, and Taiwan's occupational Safety and Health Act in the comparative table of occupational safety and health supervisory matters shown in Table 2. Apart from explicitly requiring the adoption general protective measures in the case of hazardous chemical products and registration in the case of new chemical products, the remaining different items, such as operating permits and equipment inspection all concern inspection review and inspection regulations, so there are no very great differences in this part. The following is an explanation of specific differences between the two systems  adopted during the design and construction stage in the case of the safety facilities of the new construction, renovation, or enlargement projects of production and business operation entities. The cost of safety and occupational disease control facilities should be included in the relevant construction project budget. In accordance with the "three simultaneities" in construction projects, safety facilities and occupational disease prevention facilities must be designed, constructed, and enter production or use simultaneously with the main project.
In addition, the design of protective facilities in construction projects with major risk of occupational disease and injury must be reviewed by the production safety supervision and management agency, and must comply with national occupational health standards and health requirements, before they may be built. When inspection is performed at the conclusion of construction project occupational disease protection facilities must be accepted by the production safety supervision and management agency before the project can enter formal production or use.
In contrast, Taiwan's occupational Safety and Health Act does not prescribes that health and safety facilities must be designed, built, or enter production or use simultaneously with the buildings they are in, and there is no need to obtain review or acceptance by the occupational safety and health agency. Here, Mainland China's regulations are worthy of consideration by Taiwan. 2) Management expenses: The laws of Mainland China specify that production and business operation entities must possess safe production conditions, and the necessary funds must China's requirements are more comprehensive than Taiwan's, we recommend that this service a reference for future legal revisions in Taiwan.

5) Health and safety management
The laws and regulations of Mainland China and Taiwan

Conclusions
In summary, while the occupational safety and health legal systems of Mainland China and Taiwan definitely contained many similarities, they also have numerous differences, and many of these differences have major impact on the rights and interests of companies and employers. As a consequence, we submit our views and recommendations concerning the following three aspects: 1) Legal system: • The fact that Mainland China addresses safety and health in two separate statutes will not facilitate the establishment of a full-scale national manage-Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology ment system for the prevention of occupational hazards. In comparison, since it includes both safety and health within the Occupational Safety and Health Act, Taiwan will not face this problematic issue. Furthermore, Taiwan's separation of the Labor Inspection Act and Occupational Safety and Health Act parallels the separation of physical standards and procedural norms, and will tend to facilitate the development of the occupational safety and health system. • Taiwan's "hybrid central" supervision and management model should be relatively free of the redundant assignment of inspection resources; In contrast, the hierarchical management by central and local governments adopted by Mainland China frequently gives rise to organizational redundancy and unclear separation of powers. This may cause companies to simultaneously face supervisory inspection or penalties from several different agencies. We recommend that Taiwanese or foreign capital enterprises perform a thorough assessment before investing in Mainland China, and draft response measures.

2) Supervision and management:
• Taiwan lacks anything similar to Mainland China's "three simultaneities" system. Much regulatory and academic discussion overseas [24] [25] [26] emphasizes that health and safety facilities should be designed, constructed, and enter production or use concurrently with the building projects with which they are associated. In order to strengthen occupational safety and health protection, we recommend that this regulation be added to Taiwan's regulations governing the review of hazardous workplaces.
• Mainland China's laws mandate that companies ensure production safety, and must provide occupational disease control funds. Taiwanese and foreign capital enterprises should consequently perform cautious assessment and faithfully budget these expenses before investing in Mainland China. We recommend that the requirement that companies involved in fields other than public construction ensure that a certain percentage of their capital budgets be used for labor health and safety management expenses be added to Taiwan's Occupational Safety and Health Act, which will serve to strengthen companies' occupational accident prevention consciousness. Criminal Law use many unclear concepts, and the most severe punishment is imprisonment of from 3 years to 7 years in severe cases. We recommend that Taiwanese or foreign capital enterprises wishing to invest or perform development in Mainland China remain vigilant and take protective measures aimed at avoiding severe punishment due to a moment of negligence.
• Mainland China's civil compensation responsibilities and other statutory compensation and insurance payments cannot be substituted from each other or mutually offset, as in the case of Taiwan's compensation, indemnification, and insurance payments, to ease the employer's liabilities. This may leave Taiwanese or foreign capital enterprises burdened with excessively heavy civil compensation responsibility. We therefore recommend that assessment be performed and response strategies drafted prior to investment or development in Mainland China.

Recommendations
In summary, the study of occupational safety and health issues plays an important role in safeguarding workers' occupational health rights, improving workplace environmental conditions, reducing safety production accidents and occupational hazards, and maintaining a good social order. By using literature research, text analysis, normative analysis, and comparative analysis to compare the overall legislation and specific legal content of cross-strait occupational safety and health laws, the Mainland can learn from Taiwan's occupational safety and health laws in the following aspects: abandon the legislative purpose At present, it pays attention to the dual purposes of economy and society, and expands in the scope of application. From the compulsory supervision law to the social legislation that pays attention to performance in the type of legislation, it should deal with the laborer's overwork and mental stress in terms of the obliga-