Han Dongfang talks to the family of a construction worker left crippled by carbon monoxide poisoning at his former work site about their long struggle for adequate compensation and company’s refusal to accept responsibility.

The Shenzhen municipal trade union plans to negotiate and sign collective wage agreements at 550 enterprises this year, part of a five year plan to “reduce wage inequality and allow the city’s millions of migrant workers to share in the benefits of economic development,” the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone News reported. A national trade union conference on the development of collective wage negotiations, held in Shenzhen on 18 March, stipulated that the city should aim to conclude a total of 1,000 collective agreements within the next five years.

Three years ago, the Southern Metropolis Daily exposed a child labour trafficking ring that brought teenagers from the remote Liangshan region of Sichuan and sold them to factories across the Pearl River Delta. Three days ago, the same media group, exposed a case of 21 adolescents who had been trafficked from Liangshan and sold to an electronics factory in Shenzhen’s Longgang district. The details of how the children were trafficked and the conditions they worked under were almost identical.

China’s Ministry of Health has announced revisions to its guidelines on smoking in public places, banning smoking in indoor public places from 1 May. China ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005 but missed the 9 January 2011 deadline to ban indoor smoking.