Chinese Law Prof Blog

New blog about the Supreme People's Court

Check it out here. It's written by Susan Finder, who has had a long career in Chinese law teaching and practice.

Supreme People's Court Work Report, 2013

Here's the text of Wang Shengjun's Supreme People's Court Work Report presented to the National People's Congress earlier this month.

Crowd-sourced translations of Chinese legal materials

China Law Translate is an experiment in crowd-sourced translation that recently went on line. According to the developer, "The goal is to allow people to translate as much or as little as they want, from Chinese to English (or vice versa), without having to commit a lot of time to the effort, but still creating a valuable library of free, bilingual legal materials through collaborative effort. Previously completed translations can also be submitted to the site."

Check it out here: www.chinalawtranslate.com

Congressional-Executive Commission on China issues annual report

It's been a busy month for me, so I'm only getting around to reporting this now. Here's the link.

1989 CCP Central Committee Notice on Strengthening Propaganda and Ideology Work

Why am I posting this? Because it is there. Rogier Creemers found this in an internal training manual for journalists he chanced across in a second-hand bookshop, and has public-spiritedly provided a translation at his blog [translation | Chinese original]. I don't think it's publicly available elsewhere, so I'm posting it here.

Executive summary of 2011 CECC report on China now available in Chinese

The Executive Summary of the 2011 Annual Report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China is now available in Chinese. Here are relevant documents:

• Original report (web link | PDF)
• Chinese translation of executive summary (web link | PDF)

New blog on Chinese intellectual property

I'd like to announce a new blog on Chinese intellectual property. It's authored by Mark Cohen, who has had a long and distinguised career in the field. Here's the address: chinaipr.com.

Human rights: US on China, China on US

On April 9th, the US State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor released its annual human rights report on various countries around the world. The China section is here.

Predictably, the Chinese government reacted by calling it "full of distortions". Regrettably, however, it declined to identify any of the distortions. Instead, it applied as usual its theory that the best way to refute an accusation is to accuse the accuser of doing the same thing, and released a report on human rights violations in the United States. The government web site carrying the report even referred to the release as "strik[ing] back". Apparently human rights violations in the US don't bother it unless the US government hits first.

The Chinese report accuses US authorities at the state and federal level of several things that few governments would admit to condoning, such as torture. What's odd is that it also waxes indignant about various civil liberties violations that, while they might get the ACLU up in arms, are engaged in by the Chinese government itself - for example, visa denials without judicial review. And I confess that my outrage meter barely budges when I read that at US airports "passengers can not refuse the security check based on their religious beliefs".

I hope each government will post the other's report on its embassy's web site.

The China Business Guide

Dan Harris over at the China Law Blog has high praise for this new book, available free on line. Please go to his blog post for his comments and the link so that he can get the page hits he deserves.

Hot spots of labor unrest in China

Here's the chart (HT: China Law Blog).

The "Blood-Stained Housing Map" (血房地图)

The Wall Street Journal's China Realtime Report writes:

China’s property sector, with its forced evictions and sometimes bloody confrontations, has long been described as something akin to a war zone. Now a team of online volunteers, led by an anonymous Chinese blogger, has launched a map-based project that brings that simile into stark relief.

Called “the Blood-Stained Housing Map,” the project uses Google Maps to plot violent housing evictions and land grabs across the country. The result bears an eerie, and sobering, resemblance to the Guardian’s own Google Maps chart showing deaths recorded in the Wikileaks Iraq war logs.

For the full report, click here. There are two maps: a “revised” version edited by the founder that shows only verified cases and an “open” version that anyone can add to or edit.

CECC launches political prisoner database

Here's the CECC's statement and associated links:

Statement of CECC Chairman Byron Dorgan and Cochairman Sander Levin on the Newly Enhanced Political Prisoner Database

Today the Congressional-Executive Commission on China launches its newly enhanced Political Prisoner Database. Since 2004, the Political Prisoner Database has provided a unique resource for governments, NGOs, educational institutions, and individuals who research political and religious imprisonment in China, or who advocate on behalf of such prisoners.

This new enhancement makes the database more powerful than ever before. By making it easier for users to find and download information about political prisoners in China, the Database now can do more than virtually any other online advocacy tool to serve our government, the American public, and Internet users around the world.

A "political prisoner" is someone who is detained or imprisoned for peacefully exercising his or her human rights under China's own Constitution and laws, or under international law. These rights include peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and free expression-including the freedom to advocate for peaceful social or political change, and to criticize Chinese government policy or Chinese government officials.

To promote the rule of law in China it is vital to publicize and seek the release of people imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, or for attempting to exercise internationally recognized rights expressing those beliefs. It is these prisoners who are making extraordinary personal sacrifices to bring greater respect for human rights and the rule of law to China. It was international pressure that played a critical role in securing the freedom of Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, Kim Daejong, and many others who helped lead their countries to greater social justice. Today's imprisoned dissidents are the leading figures of tomorrow's free societies built on respect for fundamental rights.

At this time, the Commission's Political Prisoner Database contains about 5,500 records of political prisoners in China. The database's new and powerful tools empower individuals, organizations, and governments to better report on political imprisonment in China and to advocate on behalf of Chinese political prisoners. The enhancement roughly doubles the types of information available to the public, including the name of the court which heard the case and dates of key legal proceedings, as well as the political prisoner's photograph. It allows for a one-click download of the entire contents of the database as an Excel spreadsheet. Moreover, the enhancement allows anyone to link to a political prisoner record and open the database record with just one click on any other Web site, blog, online document, or email. The link doesn't just open a stored Web page-it opens the current database record.

The United States and China's engagement on trade and other matters has never been as extensive as it is today. The potential of this engagement in the future to bring prosperity and stability depends on China's applying its laws equally and fairly, in accordance with international human rights norms, and that will require an end to the practice of political imprisonment. The Commission's newly enhanced Political Prisoner Database will play a critical role in enabling governments, NGOs, educational institutions, and the general public around the world to monitor China's progress toward that end.

The links below provide useful information related to the Political Prisoner Database.

• Upgraded Political Prisoner Database Representative Cases
• Political Prisoner Database New Features
• Partial List of Political Prisoners Known or Believed to be Detained or Imprisoned in China as of July 25, 2010 (1,383 Cases)

The Database and related information can be accessed via: http://www.cecc.gov/pages/victims

Direct link to the Political Prisoner Database: http://ppd.cecc.gov/

Cool resource for Chinese business law

You know all those general-interest memos that law firms write on various topics and post on their web sites to show how much they know? There's a lot of good stuff on China that gets written. Wouldn't it be nice to see it all? I can't remember how I found this, but a site called mycorporateresource.com collects and aggregates memos on various topics from the top 100 US law firms. One of their topics is China. Here's their China page. You can also go here for an RSS feed to your blog reader.

AIDS law database launched

Here's the press release from Asia Catalyst:

(Gejiu, China, March 9, 2010) -- Asia Catalyst is proud to announce the “public beta” launch of its Asian AIDS Law Database.  The database is a free, user-friendly resource, searchable in Chinese and English, to help researchers to find HIV/AIDS-related statutes throughout Asia. It is the first database exclusively dedicated to this purpose.

With the “public beta” launch, Asia Catalyst invites lawyers, experts and organizations to share AIDS-related laws and policies from around Asia that may not yet be online. The database has over 100 records, ranging from Cambodia’s draft law on drug control to the national policy on HIV/AIDS of Bangladesh.

“The database will enable lawyers to analyze AIDS-related laws, and use them in their own advocacy,” said Ken Oh, editor of Asia Report (http://www.yazhoudiaocha.com), the news site that hosts the database. “Asian AIDS activists tell us that some governments are more responsive to model language from another Asian law.”

The project was born in response to growing demand from Asian AIDS advocates engaged in legal analysis and advocacy. The database was created by a volunteer team of law students and pro bono lawyers working with Asia Catalyst.

Asia Report, the Asia Catalyst-sponsored site that hosts the database, provides Chinese and English-language news about economic and social rights in North, South and Southeast Asia, with links to Asian rights groups, and announcements of upcoming conferences and events.

Asian AIDS Law Database users may choose countries, topics and levels of government from drop-down menus in both English and Chinese. The database will provide the text of the law or policy and a link to its location online. All records are in English, with Chinese translations provided where available.

“The international AIDS law field is growing quickly,” said  Ken Oh.“We hope our colleagues in Asia will use the database to analyze existing laws–and draft new ones.”

The database may be visited at http://www.yazhoudiaocha.com/laws/.

Asia Catalyst is a US-based resource for grassroots organizations working on HIV/AIDS in Asia. For more information, please see our website at www.asiacatalyst.org.

Legal knowledge in propaganda posters

The Dutch sinologist Prof. Stefan Landsberger has amassed a huge collection of Chinese propaganda posters. Check out the law-related material here. Particularly quaint is the picture of the upright official turning down a bribe of two bottles of liquor and some cigarettes. Nowadays even the official's amah would be insulted at such a pathetic bribe.

Sue the Chinese government, get hacked. Plus, the Cybersitter complaint.

That's what happened to the lawyers for Cybersitter, the California software developer that's suing the PRC government (among others) on charges they pirated Cybersitter's software in developing Green Dam. Here's the report.

Rich Kuzlan's AsiaBizBlog has also posted the complaints in the case. Here are the links:

• Cybersitter v. People's Republic of China et al.
• Cybersitter v. CBS Interactive

Chinese law on the iPhone

Not, regrettably, this blog, but the China Law Blog. You can download the app from the iTunes store here. While I can't speak to the technical quality of the app, I can highly recommend the content.

More on the Google/China affair: Google's statement in Chinese

Yesterday I blogged about Google's statement about its China operations; here's the statement in Chinese, courtesy of Human Rights in China.

Chinese art law web site and newsletter

For those interested in Chinese art law - I know there's at least a few of you out there - there's a new web site and newsletter, China Art Law, set up by Nancy Murphy, an attorney in Beijing.

New CSRC rule on avoidance

I've recently started following (and recommend) the Wall Street Journal's China Real Time Report blog. The other day it reported on a new rule of avoidance promulgated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Officials who leave the CSRC cannot work for regulated parties for a period of three years (senior officials) or two years (others) (Chinese source here). A problem, however, is that apparently the rule is not enforceable by any third party. The only way it can be enforced seems to be via the CSRC's giving a hard time to violators and their employers if they ever need action on something from the CSRC (the rule itself speaks of "giving the cold shoulder to" (冷淡对待) such people). This could be effective in many cases and is a cheap enforcement mechanism. On the other hand, if the problem is that people who leave the CSRC for the private sector are valuable because they have friends and contacts remaining in the CSRC who will do them favors, how can we be confident that those friends and contacts will follow the "cold shoulder" rule?