BEIJING — A fire breaks out in a Chinese factory, and panicked workers discover one exit after another is locked. That describes not only the poultry plant fire that killed 119 people Monday, but a toy-factory blaze that left 87 workers dead 20 years earlier.

The similarities between the two worst factory fires in China's history suggest that little has changed for industrial workers even as the country has transformed its economy.

The bolted doors, clearly a violation of Chinese law, are emblematic of the often callous approach to worker safety in China that leads to frequent industrial disasters and an annual death toll in the tens of thousands.

While the country's increasingly sophisticated economy has surged into second place globally behind the United States, industrial safety conditions often more closely resemble those in struggling impoverished nations such as Bangladesh, where more than 1,100 people died in an April garment factory collapse.

“Throughout China's modern economic development, there has really been very little consideration for the rights and interests of the workers,” said Li Qiang, executive director of New York-based China Labor Watch, which closely tracks working conditions in China.

Inspectors today were combing through the charred wreckage of the Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co.'s processing plant, where fire raced through a chicken processing room in just three minutes on Monday morning.

It was one of China's worst recent industrial disasters. The death toll is the highest since a September 2008 mining cave-in that claimed 281 lives, and closely followed two other industrial blazes in the past five days that killed two workers.

Workers quoted in state media said exits were locked to secure the property and to keep them from stepping outside for breaks, despite the requirement in Article 24 of China's emergency response law requiring that safety exits be kept open and clearly marked. China's labor law also mandates safe working conditions.

Only a single door was open to permit escape.