Viewpoint

02.01.22

Verdicts from China’s Courts Used to Be Accessible Online. Now They’re Disappearing.

Luo Jiajun & Thomas Kellogg
Judicial transparency in China has taken a significant step backward in recent months. Beginning at least a year ago, China’s Supreme People’s Court has considerably scaled back the number of cases available on its China Judgments Online web portal...

China’s First Big #MeToo Case Tests the Party

Lavender Au from New York Review of Books
In November, a court at last notified Zhou Xiaoxuan, known more commonly by her nickname, Xianzi, that it would try her case, a civil lawsuit filed in 2018 against television host Zhu Jun, who she alleges sexually harassed her. But when the trial...

Who Owns Red Envelope Cash – Parents or Children? A Chinese Court Decides

Kinling Lo
South China Morning Post
Chinese internet users have been arguing about whether red envelopes – filled with cash and given as gifts during the Lunar New Year – should go to children or their parents, after a court published rulings on several cases.

In China, Fears That New Anticorruption Agency Will Be Above the Law

Chris Buckley
New York Times
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is pushing to establish a new anticorruption agency with sweeping powers to sidestep the courts and lock up anyone on the government payroll for months without access to a lawyer — a plan that has met surprisingly vocal...

Conversation

08.17.17

Political Prisoners in Hong Kong

Jerome A. Cohen, Alvin Y.H. Cheung & more
On August 17, a Hong Kong appeals court sentenced student democracy activists Joshua Wong, Alex Chow, and Nathan Law to six to eight months imprisonment. The three had earlier been convicted of crimes related to unlawful assembly during a...

Eye-Catching China Activist Super Vulgar Butcher ‘Admits Wrongdoing’

Reuters
A human rights activist best known as “Super Vulgar Butcher” who rose to prominence by harnessing social media to mobilize public support admitted in a closed-door trial that his actions “violated the law”, a Chinese court said on Monday.

Caixin Media

07.07.17

Court Rules Hospital Violated Gay Man’s Liberty

A gay man in Henan province has been awarded 5,000 yuan (U.S.$735) in compensation from a local psychiatric hospital where he was locked up for 19 days and forced to take pills and injections as therapy for his homosexuality. In its decision on June...

Books

05.15.17

A World Trimmed with Fur

Jonathan Schlesinger
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, booming demand for natural resources transformed China and its frontiers. Historians of China have described this process in stark terms: pristine borderlands became breadbaskets. Yet Manchu and Mongolian archives reveal a different story. Well before homesteaders arrived, wild objects from the far north became part of elite fashion, and unprecedented consumption had exhausted the region’s most precious resources.In A World Trimmed with Fur, Jonathan Schlesinger uses these diverse archives to reveal how Qing rule witnessed not the destruction of unspoiled environments, but their invention. Qing frontiers were never pristine in the nineteenth century—pearlers had stripped riverbeds of mussels, mushroom pickers had uprooted the steppe, and fur-bearing animals had disappeared from the forest. In response, the court turned to “purification”; it registered and arrested poachers, reformed territorial rule, and redefined the boundary between the pristine and the corrupted. Schlesinger’s resulting analysis provides a framework for rethinking the global invention of nature. —Stanford University Press{chop}

China Corruption Prosecutions Drop for First Time in Five Years

Hudson Lockett
Financial Times
Fall of 20% in party officials handed to courts marks change of tack in campaign

China: Limited Victory for Man in Transgender Dismissal Case

BBC
A transgender man has won his case for unfair dismissal at a court in China.

Michael Jordan Owns Right to His Name in Chinese Characters, Too, Court Rules

Sui-Lee Wee
New York Times
Michael Jordan has pulled out a victory in an arena long known as unfriendly to visitors: the Chinese legal system

Henan Province, a Butt of Jokes in China, Gets a Champion in Court

Chris Buckley
New York Times
Henan has a P.R. problem, but Jing Changshui has an answer. He’s suing.

Caixin Media

02.29.16

Former Energy Official Says Police Tortured Him into Confessing

A former deputy director of National Energy Administration (NEA) on trial for taking bribes has pleaded not guilty because he says the charges are based on a false confession that was extracted via torture and intimidation, according to a person who...

Media

02.04.16

Seeking Justice for China’s ‘Underage Prostitutes’

Four and a half years ago in a small village on the outskirts of the coastal city of Yingkou in northern China, a woman stopped a 12-year-old girl outside the child’s school and lured her into a car. “If you don’t come with me, I will beat you every...

China Resists Harsh Punishments for Those Involved in Wrongful Convictions

Javier Hernandez
New York Times
The Communist Party has made overturning cases of gross injustice a centerpiece of its efforts to overhaul the legal system.

Viewpoint

12.30.15

No, Pu Zhiqiang’s Release Is Not A Victory

Hu Yong
Pu Zhiqiang is a well-known Chinese human rights lawyer and outspoken intellectual who has taken on many precedent-setting cases defending freedom and protecting civil liberties. But his outstanding contributions in the judicial realm and his...

Viewpoint

11.30.15

Court in China Adds Last-Minute Charge Against Rights Leader During Sentencing

Yaxue Cao from China Change
On August 8, 2013, Guo Feixiong (real name Yang Maodong) was arrested and then indicted on charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” The heavy sentence came as a shock to everyone following the case. More shockingly, the...

Chinese Student Protesting Books’ Stance on Homosexuality Meets With Officials

Chris Buckley
New York Times
Gay activists in China brought their demands for public acceptance to a court.

China’s Banks Test U.S. Legal System

NICOLE HONG and LINGLING WEI
Wall Street Journal
Bank of China says turning over account records would violate Chinese law.

China Court: Rape Risk Higher for Women With ‘Bad Habits’ Like Smoking, Drinking

Xu Yangjingjing and Simon Denyer
Washington Post
Women who smoke, drink and dress provocatively are more likely to be raped.

Guo Meimei, Chinese Web Celebrity, Gets 5-Year Sentence on Casino Charge

DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW
New York Times
A woman notorious for a lavish lifestyle while claiming to work for a charity was convicted of running a casino.

China to Boost Support for NGOs That Sue Environment Polluters

Feifei Shen
Bloomberg
The nation will work to reduce court charges for NGOs in public non-profit environmental litigation, according to a statement on the website of China’s Supreme People’s Court. Defendants will be required to pay court costs when plaintiffs win...

China Sentences 8 to Death for Attacks in Xinjiang

Didi Tang
ABC
The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in the capital of Xinjiang also handed out suspended death sentences to five others, China Central Television said, without mentioning when the trials were held.

Chinese Courts Are Selling Seized Assets on Alibaba’s Taobao

Sophia Yan
CNN
Ever wonder what it's like to live large like a corrupt Chinese businessman or official? This is your chance.

China Focus: By Rule of Law, China On the Way to Improving Governance

Xinhua
Xinhua
At 7:00 a.m., Shanghai-based lawyer Zhang Jie opened his computer at home, logged onto the Judicial Opinions of China website, and read a court ruling on a case he had offered legal aid to. The whole process took no more than one minute.

What China Means by ‘Rule of Law’

Paul Gewirtz
New York Times
There’s plenty of evidence that China sees the rule of law in nuanced and complex ways.

Unprecedented: Chinese Company Beats Obama in Court

Wall Street Journal
In an unprecedented development on Tuesday,Chinese-owned Ralls Corp. proved the naysayers wrong, securing a court victory over the president that could shake up the way the U.S. reviews foreign acquisitions with national security concerns.

Power Shift: Hopeful Signs in China’s Legal Reform Plan

Stanley Lubman
Wall Street Journal
The Central Leading Group for Judicial Reform of the Chinese Communist Party announced the reform measures last month and an overview of a new five-year plan issued by the Supreme People’s Court on Wednesday signals a serious intention to implement...

China Charges Four in Train Station Massacre

Calum MacLeod
USA Today
Chinese authorities Monday charged four people with terrorism and murder in the March 1 knife massacre in the southwest city of Kunming, state media announced.

Media

10.11.13

How Social Media Complicates the Role of China’s Rights Lawyers

Xia Junfeng was once unknown, but his 2009 arrest for the murder of security officers—who, he alleged, had savagely beaten him—made him a symbolic figure in a national debate about human rights and reform in China. Yet many wonder whether this...

Media

08.27.13

The Surprise Loser of China’s Trial of the Century: Its Corruption Watchdog

It seems like everybody has something to gain from Show Trial 2.0, a.k.a. the semi-live tweeting of fallen politician Bo Xilai’s day in court.Bo Xilai the showman takes a bow with a flourish; Gu Kailai, the scorned wife, exacts sweet revenge;...

Media

08.22.13

You Can’t Handle the Truth: Bo Xilai’s Courtroom Performance Wins Fans

A show trial this is not. But is a twist ending in the major blockbuster “The Life of Bo Xilai” in the offing?The long-awaited trial of Bo Xilai, once a rising star in the Chinese Communist Party, took place Thursday morning, but instead of the...

Chinese Judges Disciplined for Cavorting With Prostitutes

Jane Perlez
New York Times
 Two judges and an official of the Shanghai high court have been expelled from the Communist Party and dismissed from their jobs after being seen on video apparently consorting with prostitutes in glitzy nightclubs.

Bo Xilai Charged With Corruption, Bribery, Abuse of Power

Bloomberg
“Defendant Bo Xilai used his official state position to seek benefits, illegally accepted an extremely huge amount of property from others, embezzled a huge amount of public money, and abused his power, resulting in huge losses to the nation and the...

Out of School

02.22.12

Chinese Law: Using the Past to Escape the Present

Glenn D. Tiffert
Amid the skyscrapers, bullet trains and brio of contemporary China, the Mao era may seem remote. Discussions of Chinese law, for instance, typically consign it to a squib if they acknowledge it at all. But this is a grave mistake. Legal reformers...