This post was originally featured at alrexchange.org.

In October and November, in cooperation with Chinese colleagues, the ALR project staff – including Project Director Ruting Chen, Program Manager Jiajing Xu and Labor Extension Coordinator May Chen – visited several cities in China. This was the Project’s third trip to China in 2015, our busiest year of travel so far!

Highlighting this trip was an international conference co-hosted by Murphy Institute and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SHUFE) School of Law, focusing on “International Free Trade and Labor Standards.” SHUFE is an excellent partner for this conference since they have been assigned by the Shanghai government to be one of the think tanks dedicated to the Shanghai (China) Free Trade Zone Pilot program.

The conference was well attended by a mixed group of scholars from various prominent universities, as well as government officials from the local Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security. On the U.S. side, the delegation was joined by a group of outstanding union leaders, scholars and labor law enforcement officials. They spoke about U.S. and international practices in Free Trade Zones around the world, as well as technical issues in local enforcement practices.

During the rest of the trip, the project team continued expanding the exchange on current labor education issues in China, and meeting with Chinese friends and colleagues engaged in our common goal of defending workers’ rights in the global economy. As in past visits, U.S. labor educators shared their expertise and experience in the U.S. on a wide range of topics and were able to answer questions related to dispute resolution techniques and collective bargaining.