ABSTRACT
At the turning of the century,people in China have been focusing
more and more on the issues like occupational safety,safety of food and
pharmaceuticals,environmental pollution.People are surrounded only by
uncertainty and insecurity.We are now living in a“risk society”.Ulrich
Beck holds the opinion that risk is unpredictable,uncalculable,and
unmanageable.In the context of risk society,there is no way to avoid risk
completely,and it is impossible“to run away from machines and return to
the fields”.Thus,how to compensate the losses resulting from risks exist
everywhere is an important topic.
For industrial injuries,worker’s compensation system and tort law
are two major mechanisms to compensate the losses suffered by injured
workers.From 19t
hcentury on,the externalization of culpability
principles,the rise of liability insurance and social insurance have been
nibbling away the territory once belonged only to tort law.Scholars call
this“the crisis of tort”.However,in nature,worker’s compensation
system and tort law have different functions and scope of application.The
worker’s compensation system in China is far from mature,it could be
harmful to advocate blindly the superiority of worker’s compensation
while exclude tort law from compensating industrial injuries.
For a long time,there have been heated debates as to the
relationship of worker’s compensation system and tort law in China.The
very purpose of this article is to try to clarify the relationship between the
two.
KEY WORDS:the risk society,worker’s compensation system,
cohesion