The Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled on April 30 that companies may not terminate employees solely because AI has automated their roles. The case involved a quality-assurance supervisor surnamed Zhou whose employer first tried to demote him after deploying an LLM for his work, then dismissed him when he refused; the court found the company had improperly shifted the costs of its own technology choices onto its employees and ordered compensation. Caixin and Xinhua both reported a comparable Beijing arbitration outcome from 2024, suggesting a consolidating standard across Chinese labor law.