Chinese Law Prof Blog

Shaanxi court tries new cases in the old style

Well, not really. It was actually fictitious cases based on literary characters tried in the old style for the purpose of spreading legal knowledge. Drawing on the story of Pan Jinlian (潘金莲) from the classical novel "The Water Margin" (水浒传), the court tried the divorce case of Pan Jinhua. The petitioner Pan was (again) a beautiful young woman, this time married to plain but good-hearted villager Wu Dafa (Wu Dalang in the novel). In order to make more money, Pan took to the road (probably to Dongguan) to seek work. There she met the wealthy and licentious Ximen Da (Ximen Qing in the novel), who we are told was from Guangdong. Together they cooked up a scheme whereby Pan would claim Wu had beaten her and get a divorce, and thereafter they could live together. (Pretty harmless compared with the story in "The Water Margin", in which Pan had to kill her husband to be rid of him, and not even necessary at least according to the formal law of the PRC, in which fault on the other side's part is nice to have but not a necessary condition for divorce.) But the court saw that Wu was an honest-looking fellow and didn't look like a wife-beater at all. Further investigation revealed the hand of Ximen Da. The court then explained to Pan what kind of person Ximen really was, at which point Pan's heart was moved so that she rejected Ximen and got back together with the faithful Wu.

One of the court's personnel explained that there were many cases like this in some respect - people leave the village and get exposed to life in the big city, and their values change (presumably for the worse).

Here's the news report.

Fellowship opportunity: Pennoyer Fellow on China, Human Rights First

Human Rights First is looking for candidates to be its Pennoyer Fellow on China. The position is for two years. The application deadline is May 16th. More information here.

Remember, you don't have to human-rights oriented to post a position here. As long as it's related to Chinese law, I'll be happy to post job opportunities regardless of ideological affiliation or commercial orientation. Well, almost regardless; I suppose if the KKK were looking for a Chinese law specialist I might not be willing to help out.

The emergence of real trade unionism in Wal-Mart stores

Here's a fascinating report from China Labor News Translations on what's been going on with labor unions in some Wal-Mart stores in China. I'll quote the first paragraph to whet your interest:

The trade unions in Chinese Wal-Mart stores are often dismissed as hollow shells set up by the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) without workers’ involvement. But through monitoring Chinese media and online blog discussions among Chinese Wal-Mart employees, CLNT has found workers who take an active interest in their store union, and at least in one case, of an elected rank and file trade union chair using the trade union platform to actively defend workers’ interests. While most – if not all – of the trade union branches are heavily dominated by Wal-Mart management or local governments, some workers have seized this union-building exercise and try to turn the unions into a body that they identify as their own to protect and to use in their struggle against Wal-Mart management.

Enforcement problems with State Compensation Law awards

Here's an interesting article about problems faced by victorious plaintiffs in collecting awards under the State Compensation Law. The courts have no compulsory enforcement powers against state organs, and so if the state organ in question simply refuses to pay, there's not much anyone can do about it.

International Trade Commission releases report finding decreased Chinese governmental involvement in economic decision-making

The BNA's WTO Reporter reports as follows (below is just an excerpt):

China's government is less involved now than in the past in attempting to influence decisionmaking in various sectors of the economy, the International Trade Commission found in a report released April 10.

The report, China: Description of Selected Government Practices and Policies Affecting Decision Making in the Economy, is the first of three requested by the House Ways and Means Committee. In the first report, the committee asked the ITC to describe practices and policies China's central, provincial, and local government bodies use to influence decisionmaking in the economy, including in the manufacturing, agricultural, and services sectors.

"The pace and magnitude of China's economic changes create challenges to understanding the role of the government in firm-level decisionmaking in China's manufacturing, agricultural, and services sectors. Although the extent of government involvement varies by sector in China's economy, the government is less involved than in the past," the ITC report found.

A PDF copy of the report (Investigation No. 332-492, USITC Publication 3978, December 2007) is available here. You can also get a copy by sending an e-mail request to Pubrequest@usitc.gov.

Human Rights Watch publishes report on lawyers in China

Human Rights Watch has just published a report on lawyers in China. Here are two ways of getting it: HRW web site | download from this site.

AmCham China publishes 2008 White Paper on American Business in China

The report is available here.

New York City program on judicial reform in China, May 13, 2008

J. Clifford Wallace, Senior Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, will speak and lead a discussion on judicial reform in China at Jones Day's New York office on May 13. More information here.

CNN sued for Cafferty's "thugs and goons" comment

CNN has now been sued in China over Jack Cafferty's now-famous "thugs and goons" comments. Lawsuits have been brought in both Beijing and Luoyang. According to news reports, the Beijing court has not yet "accepted" the case (this might refer to formal docketing (li'an 立案)); the Zhengzhou court has "accepted" (接受) the complaint (in this case, presumably meaning it has agreed to read it and think more about it), but has not yet decided whether to docket it.

Here's my quick-and-dirty analysis (I'm busy preparing for a class):

Chinese law does allow damages for what under US law would be considered merely insulting expressions of opinion (and therefore non-actionable) - I'm thinking of the case in which a journalism professor sued a web site for posting a student's derogatory opinions about him and his teaching materials. (Discussed here.) Thus, under existing Chinese law, I think the Dalai Lama, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Patten, and Chen Shuibian might have a good case against Xinhua and various Chinese government officials (although of course the prospects of their being allowed to sue and win are, to say the least, remote). The problem here, though, is different: can individuals who feel offended by a general derogatory reference about their group do anything about it? (Let's assume for the sake of argument that Cafferty was including all Chinese, and not just the government.) To allow this kind of suit is opening a real can of worms. The relevant precedent in this case might be the Zhengzhou lawyers who sued the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau because they were offended at the PSB's insulting banner about Henan criminal gangs. (Discussed here.) That case ended in a mediated settlement, though, so we don't have a court ruling. Still, I guess it's significant that the court accepted the case in the first place, and didn't throw it out immediately as not stating a claim. At the same time, though, the court in question was a Zhengzhou court, and in any case may not have analyzed the complaint in terms of whether or not it stated a claim for which relief could be granted.

SUPPLEMENTAL POST: Prof. Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert at UCLA School of Law, has very kindly responded to my invitation to comment on US law aspects as follows:

Indeed, under U.S. law the "thugs and goons" comment would be clearly constitutionally protected opinion.  Even under Beauharnais v. Illinois (1952), which upheld some sorts of group libel laws, such a statement about a foreign country would likely be protected.  But Beauharnais is widely (and correctly, I think) viewed as having been implicitly overturned by New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) and later libel cases.

Leading scholars comment on the death penalty in China

In this article in the Legal Daily (法制日报), three expert commentators (Hu Yunteng of the SPC research department, Chen Weidong of the Renda Law School, and Liu Renwen of CASS Law Institute) look back on the first year of the Supreme People's Court's exercise of its exclusive review power over death penalty cases.

HT: Joshua Rosenzweig

Hu Jia's lawyer says government illegally blocks appeal

Hu Jia's lawyer Li Fangping states that following his conviction, Hu Jia was held incommunicado and barred from consulting with his legal team to discuss an appeal. The period for lodging an appeal has now expired. Here's the AFP report.

Here's my previous post on this subject.

Aha - I knew it...

On March 31st, the Beijing municipal government promulgated a set of rules, effective May 1st, that banned smoking in many public places, including restaurants. My thought at the time was that if they could really make this ban stick, we would have to rethink many of our ideas about Chinese state capacity. It looks like we can postpone the rethinking: the China Daily reports that "Beijing restaurants, bars and Internet cafes have been exempted from a proposed smoking ban at public venues in response to concerns expressed by business owners." Here's the Associated Press report.

Asian Journal of Comparative Law: latest issue

Here's the latest issue of the AJCL, containing several articles related to Chinese law. Downloads are free, but registration is required.

Chinese law-related presentations at the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting

Here's a list (possibly incomplete), courtesy of Neysun Mahboubi, of China-related presentations at the upcoming annual meeting in Montreal of the Law and Society Association:

Thursday 12:30 - 2:15 pm 1310 Death and Other Penalties 1310
        conference RM 10 Chia-Wen Lee, National Cheng-Kung University Understanding Capital Punishment in Taiwan

Thursday 2:30 - 4:15 pm 1407 CRN33 East Asian Law and Society--Law and Human Rights and Social Movements in East Asia 1407
        conference RM 07 Holning Lau, Hofstra University Economic Arguments for Human Rights: The Case of Sexual Orientation Rights

Friday 10:15 - 12:00 pm 2206 The Roles and Perceptions of Crime Victims in National and International Settings 2206
        conference RM 06 George Zheng, University of Hong Hong Which Kind of Party? The Role of Crime Victims in the Criminal Procedure in China

Friday 10:15 - 12:00 pm 2212 CRN33 East Asian Law and Society--Theoretical Issues in East Asian Law and Politics 2212
        conference RM 12 Simon-Hoey Lee, Tsinghua University The Chinese Way of "Market" Reform in Search: A Study from the Property Law Legislature

Friday 10:15 - 12:00 pm 2226 Globalization, Crime, and Human Rights 2226
        conference RM 26 Patrick Keenan, University of Illinois China, Africa, and Human Rights: A Theory of Wealth and Conditions

Friday 10:15 - 12:00 pm 2228 Legal Pluralism as Mediation between Traditional and Modern Legal Cultures 2228
        conference RM 28  Qinglan Long, University of Hong Kong Relevancy between Corporations and Clans: Ideologies behind Comparative Law

Friday 10:15 - 12:00 pm 2229 Empirical Research on Cause Lawyers in the U.S. and Asia 2229
        conference RM 29 1. Sida Liu, University of Chicago and Terence Halliday, American BarFoundation Dancing Handcuffed in a Mine Field: Survival Strategies of Defense Lawyers in China's Legal Complex 2. Waikeung Tam, University of Chicago The Rise of Liberal Cause Lawyering in Hong Kong: Roles, Opportunities, and Constraints

Friday 12:30 - 2:15 pm 2311 Managing Health as a Public Good: Risks, Panics, and Accountabilities 2311
        conference RM 11 Wei-Hong Wang, National Taiwan Normal University A Comparative Study on Human Right Protection in the Post-SARS Public Health Laws in Taiwan and China

Friday 2:30 - 4:15 pm 2406 CRN33 East Asian Law and Society--Police, Confessions, and Criminal Justice in East Asia 2406
        conference RM 06 Li Chen, Columbia University History and Politics of China's Legal Reform in Summary Criminal Procedures, 1997-2007

Friday 4:30 - 6:15 pm 2513 Roundtable: The Role of Law in Contemporary Russia and China--A Comparative Approach 2513
        conference RM 13 Mary E. Gallagher, University of Michigan Participant Randall Peerenboom, Foundation for Law Justice and Society Participant

Saturday 2:30 - 4:15 pm 3415 CRN33 East Asian Law and Society--Roundtable--Gender and Law in East Asia 3415
        conference RM 15 Xiaonan Liu, China University of Political Science and Law Participant

Saturday 4:30 - 6:15 pm 3504 CRN33 East Asian Law and Society--Transformation of Professional Legal Education in East Asia 3504
        conference RM 04 Richard Wu, University of Hong Kong Significance of Professional Legal Education Reform in Hong Kong to Practical Skill Training in Chinese Law Schools: A Critical Assessment

Saturday 4:30 - 6:15 pm 3510 CRN24 Rule of Law, State Building, and Transition--Regulatory Perspectives on the Rule of Law 3510
        conference RM 10 Michael W. Dowdle, Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) China and the Post-Regulatory State

Sunday 8:15 - 10:00 am 4103 CRN24 Rule of Law, State Building, and Transition--The Post-Developmental State 4103
        conference RM 03 Michael W. Dowdle, Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) Chair/Discussant 1. Fuyong Chen, Tsinghua University / UC Berkeley Striving for Independence, Competence, and Fairness: A Case Study of Beijing Arbitration Commission 2. Yue Niu, University of Hong Kong The HKSAR Basic Law and Universal Suffrage for the Legislative Council

Sunday 8:15 - 10:00 am 4117 New Forms of Property: Legal and Economic Consequences 4117
        conference RM 17 Haiyan Liu, Indiana University Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement and Criminalization in the US, Taiwan and Mainland, China

Sunday 8:15 - 10:00 am 4123 Symbolic and Legal Effects of Courts in Political Change and Transitions 4123
        conference RM 23 Neysun Mahboubi, Yale University Suing Government in China

Sunday 10:15 - 12:00 pm 4204 CRN33 East Asian Law and Society--Women in Law and Legal Education in East Asia 4204
        conference RM 04 Xiaonan Liu, China University of Political Science and Law Getting Away from Private Sphere: Women in Legal Education and Profession

Internship at Chinese law firm

The following announcement was recently posted on the Chinalaw list:

We are a Chinese law firm with offices around China, working predominantly for foreign clients. We welcome applications from foreign law students interested in an internship position at our Guangzhou, Shanghai or Tianjin offices during the summer or at another time. Students must be fluent in English, Chinese or Italian would be an advantage. Those interested may contact me directly at mjroos@wjnco.com.

Best regards,

Maarten Roos
Wang Jing & Co.