When Li Wan, then a cashier at one of Walmart’s outlets in the booming city of Shenzhen in southern China, attended a two-day collective bargaining seminar in Hong Kong, she never imagined she might become an exemplar of progress in labour rights in China.

Ms Li, a softly spoken 37-year-old, was on sick leave at the time for a back injury. Photos from the seminar at the Centre for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong were spotted by the government-backed All China Federation of Trade Unions, which sides with employers in China. Ms Li believes union representatives informed Walmart. “The company then called stores, asking managers to figure out who was in the photo,” she says. Ms Li was fired for “dishonest conduct” by Walmart in 2011.

In September last year, Shenzhen’s Intermediate People’s Court ruled that her termination of employment was illegal and ordered Walmart to pay Rmb48,636 ($7,800) to Ms Li, who now works elsewhere and prefers to use a pseudonym. Walmart declined to comment on the case.