A 16-year-old vocational student arrived at a factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, for an internship. He worked 11-hour shifts – days and nights, weekdays and weekends – processing car parts. A 17-year-old began an internship at a technology company’s factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, logging more than 10 hours a day hauling heavy boxes. Another 17-year-old, assigned to an electronics manufacturing factory in Jiangxi Province, January 2022, worked 12-hour shifts.
Internships are mandatory for graduation from secondary vocational schools across China. But tragically these three young people did not finish their education. Despite expressing severe distress to factory managers and teachers, all three died during their internships, two by suicide, and one of serious illness that had progressed too far before receiving adequate medical care.
These were not workplace accidents in any ordinary sense. For vocational school students, internships are supposed to help build career skills for the roughly 4 million children who graduate each year. But new research by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) shows that some internships involve hazardous conditions for student interns: long hours, vulnerability to work injuries, inappropriate work assignments, inadequate protection mechanisms, all in violation of domestic and international law.
