This paper mainly reviews on safety evaluation in China in recent years, explains the role of safety evaluation playing in work safety and introduces the progress of safety evaluation made in industries. Also it introduces some important provisions on Safety Evaluation Agencies (SEA), and the evaluation specifications and standards, on which the safety evaluation is carried out, issued by China government. Furthermore, it analyzes the incompletes in safety evaluation and discusses their possible influence on SEA, local administration of work safety and the public's reorganization, and indicates the key points to be developed in China future safety evaluation.
Safety evaluation is not only an important means of implementing and fulfilling the policy of “safety first and prevention oriented”, but also the base of carrying out scientific and standardized management in enterprise. Safety evaluation can not only directly remove hazards and reduce the accidents occurring, benefiting the complete improvement on safety management of enterprises, but also be helpful to strengthening the treatment and retrofitting unsafe conditions specifically, lowering the risk at the maximum, further raising the productivity with safety guaranteed, and promoting the steady improvement of work safety situation in China (Zhong, Liu, & Wei, 2003).
The safety evaluation in China has generally experienced the following three stages (State Administration of Work Safety, 2004):
The first stage is the exploring period (1970–1987). At the end of 1970s, scholars of China developed some safety assessment and risk evaluation methods with modern safety management thoughts and reference to foreign safety assessment experiences. These methods have been applied to the management of enterprise's work safety, with good results achieved.
The second stage is the beginning stage (1988–2003). In 1988, the former Ministry of Labor (MOL) put forward the requirements for carrying out occupational safety and health assessment on construction engineering and projects for the first time. In 1996, MOL required that six types of construction projects should accept safety pre-evaluation (SPE). In 1999, the former State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC), issued Qualification Approval and Management Rules of Construction Projects (Engineering) Labor Safety and Health Pre-evaluation Authority, and the qualification approving of SEA was brought into the way under the supervising of law. In 2002, State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) issued Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Safety Evaluation Agencies (SEA), advancing the development of such assessments with the complete qualification approving of SEA.
The third stage is the period for the development and standardization of safety evaluation (2003–now). Since 2003, the safety evaluation has been developed rapidly, with the issue of related laws and regulations, and technical standards in succession, the constant perfection of supervision system of SEA and staffs, the continuous improvement on safety evaluation service and quality.
In development of safety evaluation in China, there are many successes experienced, and also some insufficiencies to be improved (Liu, Zhong, & Xing, 2005). It will be an important guidance and reference for China's work safety to reveal the reasons for those insufficiencies. This paper looks back and summarizes the safety evaluation since 2003 in China.
