In Chinese employment law, a staffing agency is an organization that provides staffing services to a client; there is no employment relationship between the employee and the staffing client, rather they provide services to the client. The client is responsible for providing lawful working conditions, job site safety, managing the work, and establishing a compensation structure.

The legal relationship between the client and the employee is a service relationship, not an employment relationship. China does not recognize joint employer status, unlike other jurisdictions in Europe or North America. Rather, China imposes joint and several liability on the staffing client as to the employment law obligations of the staffing agency.

Terminology
In Chinglish, this arrangement is described as using a labor dispatcher to dispatch laborers to a unit. The Chinglish word “dispatch” was originally adopted and localized from the English word “assignment,” and simply means that the staffing agency provides work assignments and not the work itself.