Shanghai issues revised regulations on production safety

The government of China’s Shanghai Municipality on October 29 issued its revised regulations on production safety, which will come into effect on December 1. The regulations went through a major revision to address new issues caused by the city’s economic development and other matters.

The latest revision has added to the regulations two new chapters, namely, “Safety Risk Management” and “Joint Management with Society”, so that the regulations now have nine chapters and 90 articles. The other seven chapters are “General Provisions”, “Guarantee of Production Safety in Enterprises”, “Rights and Duties of Employees regarding Production Safety”, “Oversight”, “Emergency Rescue, Investigation and Handling of Production Safety Accidents”, “Legal Responsibility” and “Supplementary Provisions”.

Here are the main changes to the regulations.

Greater responsibility of the government

The revised regulations increase the following responsibilities:

• Responsibility of the production safety committees of cities and districts for coordination and guidance
• Responsibility of the emergency departments for general management
• Responsibility of the departments in charge of relevant industries for production safety management
• Responsibility of low-level departments in charge of development zones, industrial parks, etc. for management

Greater responsibility of companies

In the revised regulations, companies are responsible for production safety and the person in charge of a company is primarily responsible for its production safety. Companies are required to establish a production safety responsibility system involving the entire personnel, implement standardized production safety management and provide their employees with production safety education and training.

Joint management with society

Joint management of the government and society will be promoted by doing more public relations, educating the public, diversifying the means of reporting and making accusations of serious risks and illegal acts concerning safety production, making use of relevant groups and organizations, developing a production safety litigation system for the public interest, etc.

Digital systems for safety risk management

Sensors will be utilized more widely to oversee companies by means other than on-site inspections, including online monitoring, remote monitoring and mobile monitoring. Big data analysis and artificial intelligence will also be used to develop prediction models and then formulate plans and measures for oversight, management and inspections based on predictions made by the models.

Production safety rules for new industries and fields

The revision has added rules for companies in new industries and fields, such as the *platform economy. These rules include the establishment of a safety production responsibility system involving the entire personnel, and the responsibility of managing safety risks.

* The platform economy is a new economic system based on digital technologies that relies on data-driven strategies, support from platforms and integration through networks. China’s BAT — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — are famous examples of platform economy companies.

The full text of Shanghai’s revised regulations (in simplified Chinese) is available at
http://www.spcsc.sh.cn/n8347/n8467/u1ai239660.html