Is an employer liable for double wages when an employee signs a blank employment contract?
Where an employee signs a blank employment contract that the employer completes later, practice divides on whether double wages are payable. Some courts hold that a contract missing the mandatory terms does not satisfy the formal requirements and that the consequences fall on an employer that required the employee to sign first and fill in later. Others treat the signature of a capable adult as authority to complete the contract. Courts in Shanghai lean to the second view: missing terms make the contract incomplete, not absent, so no double wages are owed.
Practice divides on this question. Jiangsu, Xinjiang and Beijing illustrate the two approaches.
Under the first view, the employment contract is the instrument that establishes the employment relationship and defines the parties' rights and obligations. Where the mandatory terms are left blank when the contract is signed, the formal requirements are not met and the employee may claim the difference in double wages. The Wuzhong District People's Court of Suzhou, as reported on the Jiangsu courts website, held that signing a contract must reflect equal consultation, that signing is the responsibility of both parties, and that the party whose fault created the absence of a signed contract bears the adverse consequences. In that case the advertising company required Ms Chen to sign a blank contract that did not specify the post, the term or the basic wage. She was entitled to refuse, and the company's demand ran counter to the principles of equality, voluntariness and consensus, so her refusal was not improper and the consequences fell on the company. The company was ordered to pay the difference in double wages for the absence of a signed contract, and the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court dismissed its appeal. In a case reported in Workers' Daily of 8 August 2025, a Xinjiang company produced on appeal a service contract with Mr Li to show that an employment relationship existed, although its content did not match the notice terminating his contract, and argued that no economic compensation was payable. The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court held that the service contract was dated 4 May 2022, which did not match the date Mr Li joined, and that it lacked the other mandatory terms, so it did not prove that a valid employment contract had been concluded, and the original judgment was upheld. The judge observed that employers must employ lawfully and must not use blank contracts or ask employees to sign first and complete the terms later, failing which the contract may be treated as not concluded and double wages may be payable. In a further case, the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing held that the contract presented to Mr Zhao did not specify the basic wage or the employer, so he was entitled to refuse to sign; the company was the party at fault in the failure to conclude a contract, and its termination of the relationship on the ground that he had refused to sign was improper and unlawful, so it was ordered to pay the difference in double wages and compensation for unlawful termination.
Under the second view, an employee of full capacity must understand and foresee the legal consequences of signing a blank contract, so the difference in double wages is not awarded. The intermediate courts of Suzhou and Wuxi in Jiangsu — the same province as the Wuzhong court — have held that an employee who signs a blank contract should foresee those consequences, which amounts to an unlimited authorisation of its content, and have refused double wages: see (2024) Su 05 Min Zhong No. 6380 and (2022) Su 02 Min Zhong No. 6072. The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court of Xinjiang, in (2025) Xin 01 Min Zhong No. 1406 and similar cases, treated the employee's signature as acceptance of the blank contract's content and dismissed the claim. The Beijing High People's Court, in (2023) Jing Min Shen No. 5580 and similar cases, held that signing a blank employment contract amounts to a general authorisation to the employer and relieves it of liability for double wages.
Courts within the same region therefore take different views. In Shanghai the mainstream view leans towards the second and refuses double wages. In (2023) Hu 01 Min Zhong No. 4630 the court held that, although the employee said she had signed a blank contract at the employer's request, a person of full capacity should clearly understand the legal consequences of her signature, and she had signed a contract that already showed an employment relationship. The first-instance finding that the contract was valid and that the parties had reached a written consensus on an employment relationship was therefore correct, and the appeal for the difference in double wages lacked a basis. Similar cases include (2025) Hu 0113 Min Chu No. 2562 and (2022) Hu 0117 Min Chu No. 15778. On this view, even where the contract omits the post, the amount of remuneration or the term, those defects do not affect the characterisation of the document as an employment contract. Article 17 of the Labor Contract Law sets out the mandatory terms of an employment contract, principally the identity of the parties, the term, the content and place of work, working hours, rest and leave, remuneration, social insurance and labor protection. The Labor Contract Law does not state expressly whether a contract without those terms comes into existence. Article 18, however, lays down how to resolve a dispute where remuneration and working conditions are not clearly agreed, and Article 81 provides that where the text of a contract provided by the employer omits mandatory terms the labor administration shall order rectification. The Labor Contract Law therefore does not treat the mandatory terms as conditions for the existence of the contract: where they are unclear the contract may be supplemented by interpretation, and where they are missing they may be corrected. A contract with incomplete content should therefore be treated as one whose terms are partly unclear, not as no contract at all. A defective contract does not prevent the basic elements of the employment relationship from being established, so no double wages are payable.
Minton's note
For employers: the process of signing contracts should be standardised so that contracts are complete and lawful and the employer's statutory duties are properly performed. Employment contracts, onboarding forms, non-compete agreements and confidentiality agreements should be kept in good order so as not to be at a disadvantage for want of evidence, and contracts should be signed promptly when an employee joins or when a contract expires, so as to avoid liability for double wages through a failure to remind the employee.
For employees: keep a copy of the contract, so that it can serve as evidence if their rights are later infringed. Before signing, check the mandatory terms carefully and make sure that the post, the place of work, remuneration and the term are clear and specific. If the contract contains blank or incomplete terms, raise the matter with the employer promptly and ask for them to be completed, so as to avoid a later labor dispute.