This research project, which is founded on field research, makes use of over 600 labor injury cases handled by lawyer Zhou Li Tai in order to research the living conditions and claims of injured workers. This research reflects the basic problems that exist within the laws and judicial system. Through these labor injury cases, the research proposes to reveal the living difficulties faced with Chinese labor, arouse social regard on rights protection of injured workers and their development. This study was funded by Oxfam Hong Kong.

Executive Summary
January 1998, Dr. Liu Kaiming happened to meet lawyer Zhou Litai, and his party — more than ten injured workers at a room in Sanhe county Longgang, Shenzhen city. Dr. Liu was strongly touched by their tragedies, and was urged to go into factories, workers' dormitories, hospitals to probe into the real stories behind “Shenzhen‘s miracles”. Soon, he found that when these injured workers came to Shenzhen, they were all filled with good dreams. Unfortunately, their dreams were broken when they were injured by machines. Even worse, few of them could receive legal and reasonable compensation over what their bodies endured. So, they seek help from lawyer Zhou to accuse against employers and the local government. Dr. Liu focused his attention on their litigation process all the time. On June 19, 1998, the administration justice court of Shenzhen's middle court heard the case, which was Wangqiong and other six workers proceeded against the Social Insurance Supervising Authority Longgang Branch. The final judgment supported Wang qiong and other six workers. Next day, Dr. Liu published this news on the front page of newspaper which he worked for, and reported the difficult process of this case and the disagreement between ‘workers' and ‘governors', which attracting highly concern about the Shenzhen‘s working accidents/industrial injury.