In Chinese employment law, a staffing agency is a business organization that holds a Staffing Agency Permit and provides temporary workers to clients. China’s temporary staffing model was adopted from the 1920s employee leasing model then used in the United States, and involves the agency placing employees on work assignments to a client. The worker is entitled to a permanent employment contract with the staffing agency, but there is no joint employer relationship. Rather, the client is jointly and severally liable with the agency as to its employment law obligations.

Conceptually, Chinese law sees the staffing agency as an employer and the worker as merely providing service to the client. The staffing agency must sign a two year employment contract with the worker and pay them every month, and continue to pay them at a lesser rate when the worker is not on assignment. Terminology
In Chinglish, a staffing agency is called a “labor dispatch agency” and to “offer an assignment” is referred to as “dispatching.”  However, the Chinese word paiqian is as dictionaries note, merely a metaphor for the traditional American temporary employment concept of “leasing.” In some other contexts, cross-border expatriate assignments, the Chinese word paiqian refers to dispatching employees.

Learn more about  the law on using temporary employees in China here.