Chinese Law Prof Blog

Chinese law journals in English

There's been some discussion recently on the Chinalaw list about Chinese law journals in English. Here's a list of those the community knows about, with comments taken from list members' comments:

• Frontiers of Law in China: Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Jointly published by the Chinese Higher Education Press and Springer, 2006-, irregularly. 

Most of the members of the editorial board of this scholarly journal are from the Law School of Renmin University of China. They select and translate academic papers on law published in China. The journal is available both in print and online at http://www.springerlink.com. 

• China Legal Science, Beijing: China Legal Science Journal Press, 2001-, annual.

This English annual journal is published by the same press that publishes the Chinese bimonthly Zhongguo Faxue (中国法学). This journal presents English translations of some good articles selected from its sister publication, Zhonguo Faxue. Both journals are the official publications of the China Law Society. The Harvard Law Library has it up to 2003; it seems to have ceased publication after that.

• Peking University Journal of Legal Studies, Peking University Press.

The link I've provided is to a page offering subscriptions. It claims quite falsely that this is the "FIRST and ONLY" law journal published by China's finest law school. Other journals published by the law faculty are Zhong-Wai Faxue (中外法学) and Beida Faxue Pinglun (北大法学评论); the latter began in 1998.

• Tsinghua China Law Review. The current issue (Spring 2009) came out recently.

The Republic of China's legal team at the Tokyo War Crimes trials

Chinalaw list member Glenn Tiffert writes (I quote with his permission):

I finally carved out the time to watch 《丧钟为谁而鸣》(For Whom Does the Death Knell Toll), a very well-done PRC documentary on the Tokyo War Crimes trials, the impressive (Republican) Chinese legal team that took part and the background to some of the crimes charged.  It includes outstanding historical footage.  I highly recommend it.  For those interested, all seven parts are on Tudou.com, the first here: http://www.tudou.com/playlist/playindex.do?lid=5244495&iid=28299621&cid=21

Chinese bankruptcy resources

I recently discovered a good resource on Chinese bankruptcy law (in English) that is probably not well known: the web site of the International Insolvency Institute. They have a page full of papers by scholars such as Shi Jingxia and Wang Weiguo.

Research guide to Hong Kong law

Just published, courtesy of Roy Sturgeon and Sergio Stone; available here.

List of on-line Chinese law databases

Flora Sapio has generously taken the time to compile and post a great list of databases on her blog; available here. (HT: Otto Malmgren.)

CECC translation of indictment of Hu Jia

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China has published a translation of the indictment of Hu Jia; it's available here.

Chinese blog on re-education through labor

Here's a cool Chinese-language blog of which I recently became aware: the "Re-Education Through Labor" (劳动教养) blog. It's blocked from China (this really shouldn't be a problem for most people any more, given proxy servers, virtual private networks, etc.), but has an RSS feed that works without any need for fancy software if you can just get to the site once to sign up for it.

HT: Otto Malmgren.

Bibliography of Western-language works on Chinese law

For the last few years, Knut Benjamin Pissler of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private Law and Private International Law in Hamburg has compiled an annual bibliography of Western-language works on Chinese law. These bibliographies have been published in the Zeitschrift fuer Chinesisches Recht/Journal of Chinese Law published by the German-Chinese Lawyers Association.

Benjamin is currently working on the 2007 edition, and I will post that shortly. I recently realized, however, that I had never posted the last two years' editions. They are below.

• 2006 edition
• 2005 edition
• Previous editions

EPA - China Environmental Law Initiative Web site

Here's the first paragraph of the EPA's press release:

In an effort to strengthen the legal framework for environmental protection in China, EPA today launched the EPA - China Environmental Law Initiative Web site. The Web site, announced by EPA General Counsel Roger R. Martella, will provide a forum for sharing information and fostering an ongoing dialogue with China on environmental law.

Full text here.

The Web site itself is here; portions have been translated into Chinese and are available here.

New Chinese law-related blog

Dr. Flora Sapio, a researcher at Lund University in Sweden, has a blog called "Forgotten Archipelagoes" that is mostly about detention in China but, as she says, not just detention, and not just in China. Check out the right hand side of the blog page for interesting links.

China Financial Markets blog

For those interested in - you guessed it - Chinese financial markets, I highly recommend Michael Pettis's blog, China Financial Markets. Pettis is a former New York-based investment banker and adjunct professor at Columbia who now teaches full time at Beijing University's Guanghua School of Management. The blog also comments frequently on issues in US-China financial relations such as the valuation of the Renminbi and the bilateral trade balance. I think it's an excellent antidote to much of the complete nonsense that passes for common knowledge in both Beijing and Washington. See, for example, the series of posts entitled "Good for the US, Less Good for China."

The death penalty in China

The latest newsletter of the Duihua Foundation has a good report on recent reforms in the death penalty regime, as well as some interesting statistics from Yunnan. Among other things, the report estimates (unfortunately without citing a source) that there were only one or two thousand executions in the early 1980s; informed estimates (cited in the report) for 2005 and 2006 put the numbers at about 8000 and 7000 respectively.

Sources on antimonopoly law in China

[This is a re-posting of a previous post; important new material has been added at the end.]

Thanks to Adam Bobrow for this recent post to the Chinalaw list:

Anyone interested in the drafting process, changes over time, recommendations provided, and comparisons with much of the competition law in more mature jursidictions should review the submissions of the American Bar Association, through several of its Sections including International, Antitrust, and Intellectual Property, to the Chinese government on the draft law.  The comments and annotated translations of the law from both a 2003 draft and a 2005 draft can be found on the ABA's website:

• The 2003 Comments of the ABA's Sections on Antitrust and International Law and Practice

• The May 2005 Comments of the ABA's Section on Antitrust, IP, and International Law (note that the body of the 2003 comments is appended to the May 2005 comments)

• The Chinese version of the same May 2005 comments

• An Article-by-Article Guide to Revisions Suggested by the May 2005 Comments

To this list I can add the following:

• Draft of June 22, 2006: Chinese | English

Baidu offers Chinese law database

Thanks to Jonathan Ocko for bringing to my attention Baidu's Chinese law database, apparently offered in collaboration with Beida's Chinalawinfo.com.

I invite readers to check the database out for themselves and see how they like it; please let other readers know by leaving a comment to this post.

Research guides to Chinese law

I have compiled a list of on-line guides to research in Chinese law and posted a link on the left sidebar to this blog under "Research Guides and Other Resources". (Formerly there was a link only to Wei Luo's excellent guide, the Internet Chinese Legal Research Center.)

For those too lazy to move their cursor a few inches to the left, here's the link.

University of Washington's Chinese law research guide

Since I just mentioned the guide to Chinese law research published by Kara Phillips (my former student at the University of Washington School of Law), let me mention another fine product of that institution, Chinese Law Research at the University of Washington, prepared and newly updated as of January 2006 by their able comparative law librarian and my former colleague, Bill McCloy. Without prejudice to the many guides to Chinese law research now available - and here I must mention Wei Luo's long-standing Internet Chinese Legal Research Center as well as his and Joan Liu's Complete Research Guide to the Laws of the People's Republic of China - Bill's opus strikes me as indispensable for anyone starting out to research any Chinese law topic. Those who have been in the field for a while may be surprised by what's become available since they wrote their law school note.

I've compiled a list of all the guides and meta-guides I know of that's available here. Please send me the URL of any others you know of.

China Law Reporter resurrected; new bibliography and guide to web-based resources for Chinese law

I'm pleased to announce the resurrection (of a sort) of the China Law Reporter, published by the China Committee of the ABA's Section on International Law. This incarnation of the China Law Reporter takes the form of a bimonthly electronic newsletter, although the editors hope to make it a monthly. The first issue (May 2006) is available here.

The China Committee has also put on its web site a guide entitled Web-Based Research Guides on PRC Legal & Business Resources, compiled by Kara Phillips of the Seattle University Law Library. This guide includes a partial bibliography of English-language literature on Chinese law.

Web site for Chinese legal history studies in Japan

I was searching for on-line images of the xiezhi (獬豸), the mythical Chinese beast that identified the guilty in criminal proceedings by butting them, when I ran across this interesting web site maintained by Terada Hiroaki (寺田浩明) of Kyoto University Law School for the dissemination of information relating to Chinese legal history studies in Japan. Among other things, it includes a link to an electronic on-line edition of the Du Li Cun Yi (读例存疑), Xue Yunsheng's famous annotation of the Qing Code and substatutes.

Speaking of the xiezhi, it's interesting to note that this is pretty much the extent of the use of magic in the history of Chinese criminal procedure - and it's solely mythical. So far as is known, Chinese criminal procedure has never had any use for magical procedures such as the dunking of witches or other forms of trial by ordeal.

Bibliographies of Western-language works on Chinese law

For the last few years, Knut B. Pissler of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private
Law and Private International Law in Hamburg has compiled an annual bibliography of Western-language works on Chinese law. These bibliographies have been published in the Zeitschrift fuer
Chinesisches Recht/Journal of Chinese Law published by the German-Chinese Lawyers Association.

Knut is currently working on the 2005 edition; a draft of that is attached here, along with several previous ones. If you have published something that ought to be included and isn't, Knut welcomes your e-mail to him here.

• Download bibliography2005_draft.pdf
• Download Bibliography2004.pdf
• Download Bibliography2003.pdf

• Download Bibliography2002.pdf

Bilingual (English-Chinese) teaching materials on US copyright law available

George Conk, an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, and Prof. Wang Qian of the East China University of Politics and Law recently co-taught a mini-course on US intellectual property law to graduate students at the East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai. Having developed a set of bilingual course materials, they have generously made them available on the Social Science Research Network here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=888190.