Billionaire Zhang Yin, who topped China's wealthiest citizens' list in 2006 with a fortune of US$3.4 billion, appeared the other day as a political figure and told the press that the country's new labor law could use some amendment, according to a news report.

Zhang is going to submit a proposal to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the upcoming annual conference in Beijing. She is a member of CPPCC's national committee.

"Requiring employers to give contracts of infinite length to workers is going back to the old times in China," she told the Chinese press, adding that the new labor law, which came into effect January 1, has already increased unemployment and impacted low-skilled and undereducated people in particular.

China's new labor law requires all employers, whether foreign or domestically-owned, to enter into written labor contracts, either fixed-term or open-ended, with the employee.

The law also stipulates that open-ended contracts must be signed if the employee has been working for the employer for more than 10 years or if the worker has already completed two fixed-term contracts.

Employers will be subject to a penalty (double the severance pay) if they fire workers without "good cause" before their contracts expire, according to the new law.

There has been wide speculation by consultants and economists that manufacturing in China will lose much of its competitive advantage under the new law.

But if Zhang's amendment proposal gets through, it will be a different story.

Although she has been living in the United States for almost two decades, Zhang remains well-connected in China in both political and business senses. Her father was a lieutenant in the People's Liberation Army.

Zhang built China's largest paper recycling business, Nine Dragons Paper. Although China's latest richest person is Yang Huiyan, a Ohio State graduate whose father handed her the real estate family business, Zhang still is the richest self-made woman.