Abstract: Accidents caused by hazardous chemicals have happened quite frequently in China in the past years. Based on the concept of regulatory space， an analytical framework was given to explore the 31 hazardous chemical accident cases from 2013 to 2015 released by China State Administration of Work Safety. The problems of Chinese local governments' occupational safety and health(OSH) regulation of hazardous chemicals were revealed in terms of legal system， historical tradition， network relationship， regulatory effect and accident cause. Multiple perspectives including regulatory system， evaluation mechanism， supervision procedure and supervisors were taken to explore the in-depth causes. As to Chinese local governments' OSH regulation of regulatory space， it was suggested that daily regulation should be concentrated on one single department， the indicators of accident casualty should be weakened， compensation should take the place of regulation in reducing regulatory space， and the structure of grass-roots regulators should be improved.

Key words: local government, hazardous chemical, occupational safety and health(OSH) regulation, regulatory space