Rights Defense Network Policy and Regulation Analysis: State Council Executive Meeting Approves in Principle Draft Revision to the Teachers Law — A Human Rights Reflection on the Teachers Law Revision: Rights on Paper Especially Need Grounded Safeguards

Special commentator: Zhang Haoran

On October 16, 2026, Premier Li Qiang chaired a State Council executive meeting to discuss and approve in principle the Draft Amendment to the Teachers Law of the People’s Republic of China, and decided to submit the draft to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress for deliberation. The meeting noted that teachers are the foundation of education and the source of its growth. It is necessary to effectively strengthen protections for teachers’ compensation and rights, reduce teachers’ non-teaching workload, improve the provision of public services for teachers, and protect teachers’ professional dignity and all their lawful rights and interests in accordance with the law. It is necessary to continue improving the teacher education and training system, focus on enhancing teachers’ professional capacity to teach and educate, strictly promote professional ethics and conduct, continuously strengthen the foundations for building a high-quality, professional teaching workforce, and sustain a favorable social atmosphere of respecting teachers and valuing education. (For details, see:

http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s6052/moe_838/202610/t20261017_1454897.html )

Analysis: A Human Rights Reflection on the Teachers Law Revision: Rights on Paper Especially Need Grounded Safeguards

“Good intentions alone are insufficient to govern; laws alone cannot put themselves into effect.” After more than three decades, the Teachers Law of the People’s Republic of China is undergoing a comprehensive overhaul. The draft revision approved in principle by the State Council executive meeting on October 16 improves the system of teachers’ rights in several areas, from recognition of status and protection of compensation to reform of professional titles and reducing and loosening burdens. Public opinion has placed high hopes on it to restore the dignity of the teaching profession. But from a human rights perspective, provisions on paper are not the same as the realization of rights in practice. The risk that the draft revision may be distorted during implementation, the scope it may create for rent seeking, the shortcomings in procedural remedies, and the one-sided misreading of the boundaries of rights all warrant greater vigilance and scrutiny.

This revision explicitly designates teachers in public primary and secondary schools as national public officials, a move widely seen as an institutional elevation of their professional status. But from the perspective of the right to work and professional autonomy, public official status has always entailed a unity of rights and obligations. In the realities of grassroots governance, it often means rigid administrative assignments and territorial responsibilities. The non-teaching burdens that teachers have long criticized are essentially the ongoing erosion of professional autonomy in education by administrative power. Once teachers are included in the public service ranks, however, various levies, campaign tasks, and inspection duties may gain an even more “compliant” pretext. The promise to reduce burdens could easily become a numbers game in which burdens decrease on paper but increase in practice, while teachers’ right to rest and teaching autonomy face new pressure.

The draft stipulates that teachers’ salaries must be no lower than those of local civil servants and that funding be given priority in the budget, directly addressing the right to remuneration, a core economic and social right. Yet for many years, this requirement has faced the practical obstacle of local governments lacking the funds to implement it; wage arrears and disguised withholding of performance pay have been common in remote areas and rural schools. Reform of professional title evaluations warrants even greater vigilance. Removing restrictions based on the number of posts is intended to open up the right to career development, but if evaluation standards remain vague and flexible and oversight mechanisms continue to be absent, education administrative departments holding evaluation authority could instead create new opportunities for rent seeking. Promotion in professional titles could turn from “waiting out the quota” into “relying on connections,” ultimately departing from the legislative aim of equal rights.

The systemic shortcomings in remedies for rights violations are an even more central pain point in protecting teachers’ rights. For a long time, the teacher appeals system has suffered from vague procedural rules, a lack of neutrality on the part of the receiving authorities, and no binding deadlines for handling cases. Teachers seeking to defend their rights often find themselves in the predicament of “having nowhere to appeal, facing obstructed administrative reconsideration, and being unable to bring a lawsuit.” If this revision only expands substantive rights without filling gaps in procedural remedies, and fails to establish a relatively independent appeals mechanism and a clear system of supervision and accountability, even the best provisions on compensation protection and career development could become paper promises without safeguards. Remedies are central to human rights protection; without remedies, rights are essentially hollowed out.

Even more concerning is a one-sided interpretation of the boundaries of rights. This revision strengthens protection for teachers’ personal dignity and prohibits insulting, defaming, or harming teachers. This is an occupational extension of citizens’ basic personality rights, but in implementation it could easily be distorted into a “shield” against public opinion oversight. There is no doubt that verbal abuse and attacks, as well as malicious framing of teachers, must be regulated by law; the professional dignity of the classroom must not be trampled. But factual reporting of professional misconduct and reasonable criticism based on public information are inherent in citizens’ freedom of speech and right to social oversight, and must not be indiscriminately classified as “insult or harm.” If, in the name of one-sidedly protecting the group’s image, reasonable oversight is met with silence and exposed problems are suppressed and covered up, or even those who report facts are labeled as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” this is essentially an erosion of the public’s right to know in the name of professional protection, and will ultimately only squander public trust in the entire teaching profession. As the saying goes, “When those above are upright, those below follow without being ordered”; defending the dignity of the teaching profession takes the resolve to remove the bad actors, not the arrogance to suppress criticism.

Likewise, the legislative intent behind the power to discipline students is to give teachers more latitude and address the predicament of “not daring to discipline, not wanting to discipline,” preventing sweeping accountability that punishes teachers for the slightest issue from hijacking their teaching autonomy. But this absolutely does not mean disciplinary power becomes an unconstrained “privilege to discipline,” much less a safe haven for those who violate professional ethics. The boundaries for applying discipline, the statutory procedures for accountability, and channels for remedies must be clearly defined and transparent. Normal educational discipline must not be swept up in unreasonable complaints, leaving teachers unable to act; nor may students’ personality rights and right to education be left unprotected, allowing abuse of disciplinary authority. The essence of the rule of law in human rights is balance. No party’s rights are absolute, and legislation that favors one side alone will only create new injustice.

Ultimately, protecting teachers’ rights is an important part of the human right to education for all, and the value of this legislative revision will ultimately be measured by the quality of its implementation in practice. If it focuses only on building a system on paper and not on oversight and accountability in practice, grants administrative discretion without setting boundaries for remedies, and speaks only of protecting group interests without balancing social oversight, even the best institutional design may be distorted in implementation. Only by establishing safeguards for implementation, respecting the two-sided boundaries of rights, and bringing human rights protections from legal provisions into the classroom can teachers truly have dignity, education have a firm foundation, and the public have trust.