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China’s Legal System

China’s legal system covers laws that fall under seven categories and three different levels. The seven categories are the Constitution and Constitution-related, civil and commercial, administrative, economic, social, and criminal laws and the law on lawsuit and non-lawsuit procedures. The three different levels are state laws, administrative regulations and local statutes.

By March 2008, the NPC and its Standing Committee had promulgated more than 229 laws currently in force, the State Council had issued over 600 administrative regulations currently in force, local people’s congresses and their standing committees had enacted over 7,000 local statutes currently in force, and the people’s congresses of national autonomous areas had enacted over 600 regulations concerning autonomy and local needs. A socialist legal system having Chinese characteristics and centered on the Constitution has taken initial shape. China now has laws governing the basic, important aspects of its political, economic, cultural and social life.

Concerning the Constitution and Constitution-related laws, in addition to having adopted the current Constitution and its four amendments, China has also enacted the Electoral Law, Law on Deputies to the NPC and to Local People’s Congresses, and a number of organic laws for state organs, Legislative Law, the Supervision Law and other laws related to state organs. China has also enacted laws concerning systems for regional ethnic autonomy, special administrative regions and primary-level mass self-governance: principally the Law on the Autonomy of Ethnic Minority Regions, the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region, the Organic Law of Villagers’ Committees and the Organic Law of Urban Neighborhood Committees.

China has enacted laws concerning property and personal relations between individual entities with equal standing in society. These principally include the General Principles of Civil Law, the Contract Law, the Guarantee Law, the Auction Law, the Trademark Law, the Patent Law, the Copyright Law, the Marriage Law, the Inheritance Law, and the Adoption Law. China also enacted laws concerning commercial relations between individual entities with equal standing in society: principally the Company Law, the Partnership Law, the Law on Single Investor Enterprises, the Securities Law, the Insurance Law, the Negotiable Instruments Law, the Commercial Banking Law, the Maritime law and the Trust Law.

China has enacted laws concerning state administration: principally the Regulations on Administrative Penalties Concerning Law Enforcement, the Administrative Punishment Law, the Administrative Licensing Law, the National Defense Law, the Government Procurement Law, the Education Law, the Law on Scientific and Technological Progress, the Law on Preventing and Controlling Communicable Diseases and the Environmental Protection Law. China has also enacted laws related to oversight of administrative activities: mainly the Law on Administrative Supervision and the Law on Administrative Reconsideration.

China has enacted laws concerning macro-economic controls: principally the Budget Law, the Audit Law, the Law on the People’s Bank of China, the Price Law, the Personal Income Tax Law, and the Law on Tax Collection and Management. China has enacted laws for maintaining market order: principally the Law on Product Quality and the Advertising Law. China has enacted laws for opening wider to the outside world: principally the Law on Joint Ventures with Chinese and Foreign Investment, the Law on Sino-Foreign Contract Joint Ventures, the Law on Wholly Foreign-Invested Enterprises, and the Foreign Trade Law. China has enacted laws to promote industrial development: principally the Agriculture Law, the Highway Law, the Civil Aviation Law, and the Electric Power Law. China has enacted laws for protecting and rationally developing natural resources: principally the Forestry Law, the Grassland Law, the Water Law, the Mineral Resources Law, and the Law on Land Management. China has also enacted laws for standardizing economic activities: principally the Metrology Law, the Statistics Law and the Surveying Law.

China has enacted laws concerning labor relations and safeguarding workers: principally the Labor Law, the Trade Union Law and the Law on Mining Safety. China has also enacted laws protecting special groups in society: principally the Law on Security for the Disabled, the Law Protecting Minors, the Law Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of Women and the Law Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of the Elderly.

With regard to criminal law, China has enacted the Criminal Law and adopted more than 10 related supplementary decisions, amendments and legal interpretations to standardize definitions of crimes, assignment of criminal responsibility and determination of punishment. Concerning lawsuit and non-lawsuit procedures, China has enacted laws to standardize procedures for lawsuits and other legal actions: principally the Criminal Procedures Law, the Civil Procedures Law, the Administrative Procedures Law, the Law on Special Procedures for Maritime Lawsuits, the Extradition Law, and the Arbitration Law.

Repression and coercion of organizations and individuals involved in civil and political rights advocacy as well as in public interest and ethnic minority issues remained severe. As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to choose their government and elections were restricted to the lowest local levels of governance. Authorities prevented independent candidates from running in those elections, such as delegates to local people’s congresses. Citizens had limited forms of redress against official abuse. Other serious human rights abuses included arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life, executions without due process, illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as “black jails,” torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and detention and harassment of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and other malcontents whose actions the authorities deemed unacceptable.

Criminal detention beyond 37 days requires approval of a formal arrest by the procuratorate, but in cases pertaining to “national security, terrorism, and major bribery,” the law permits up to six months of incommunicado detention without formal arrest. After formally arresting a suspect, public security authorities are authorized to detain a suspect for up to an additional seven months while the case is investigated. After the completion of an investigation, the procuratorate can detain a suspect an additional 45 days while determining whether to file criminal charges. If charges are filed, authorities can detain a suspect for an additional 45 days before beginning judicial proceedings. Public security sometimes detained persons beyond the period allowed by law, and pretrial detention periods of a year or longer were common.

There was also a lack of due process in judicial proceedings, political control of courts and judges, closed trials, the use of administrative detention, failure to protect refugees and asylum seekers, extrajudicial disappearances of citizens, restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities. The government imposed a coercive birth-limitation policy that, despite lifting one-child-per-family restrictions, denied women the right to decide the number of their children and in some cases resulted in forced abortions (sometimes at advanced stages of pregnancy). Severe labor restrictions continued, and trafficking in persons was a problem.

Although most of the more than 300 lawyers and human rights activists detained in 2015 were released, 16 remained in pretrial detention without access to attorneys or family members at year’s end. Four others were sentenced to jail terms ranging from three years to seven and one-half years in trials that foreign governments and international human rights organizations said lacked basic due process. Wang Yu, one of the most prominent lawyers detained during the crackdown, was released after her televised confession, which circumstances suggest was likely coerced. Many others remained under various restrictions, including continuous residential surveillance at undisclosed locations. Public security officials continued to harass, intimidate, and take punitive measures against the family members of rights defenders and lawyers in retaliation for their work.

As of the end of 2016, at least 16 individuals detained as a result of the July 2015 “709” roundup of more than 300 human rights lawyers and legal associates remained in pretrial detention at undisclosed locations without access to attorneys or to their family members. The crackdown primarily targeted those individuals who worked as defense lawyers on prominent human rights and public interest cases, including the 2008 melamine scandal, the Beijing “feminist five” detentions, the Xu Chunhe case, and cases involving the sexual abuse of young girls.

The law prohibits the physical abuse and mistreatment of detainees and forbids prison guards from coercing confessions, insulting prisoners’ dignity, and beating or encouraging others to beat prisoners. Amendments to the criminal procedure law exclude evidence, including coerced confessions obtained through illegal means, in certain categories of criminal cases. Enforcement of these legal protections continued to be lax.

Numerous former prisoners and detainees reported they were beaten, subjected to electric shock, forced to sit on stools for hours on end, hung by the wrists, raped, deprived of sleep, force-fed, and otherwise subjected to physical and psychological abuse. Although ordinary prisoners were abused, prison authorities reportedly singled out political and religious dissidents for particularly harsh treatment. In some instances close relatives of dissidents also were singled out for abuse.

The problem of torture was systemic, according to a UN Committee against Torture report released in December 2015 that detailed the extent to which torture was embedded in the criminal justice system. While the UN committee acknowledged some improvements, such as the broader use of surveillance cameras during interrogations, the report stated that torture was “entrenched.”

According to the Legal Daily (a state-owned newspaper covering legal affairs), the Ministry of Public Security directly administered 23 high-security psychiatric hospitals for the criminally insane (also known as ankang facilities). While many of those committed to mental health facilities had been convicted of murder and other violent crimes, there were also reports of activists and petitioners involuntarily subjected to psychiatric treatment for political reasons. Public security officials may commit individuals to ankang facilities and force treatment for “conditions” that have no basis in psychiatry. In February, one domestic NGO reported that it had tracked more than 30 cases of activists “who were forcibly committed to psychiatric institutions in 2015, often without their relatives’ knowledge or consent.” For example, Shanghai authorities dispatched agents to intercept petitioner Lu Liming when he was en route to Beijing to protest. They detained him in a psychiatric facility, tied him to a bed for days, beat him, and forcibly medicated him.

Authorities detained or arrested persons on allegations of revealing state secrets, subversion, and other crimes as a means to suppress political dissent and public advocacy. These charges--including what constitutes a state secret--remained ill defined, and any piece of information could be retroactively designated a state secret. Authorities also used the vaguely worded charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” broadly against many civil rights activists. It remained unclear what this term means.

Authorities continue to imprison citizens for reasons related to politics and religion. Tens of thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated, most in prisons and some in administrative detention. The government did not grant international humanitarian organizations access to political prisoners.

According to the Dui Hua Foundation, the number of executions fell to 2,400 in 2013, down from a high of 24,000 in 1983. The drop reflected the reform of the capital punishment system initiated in 2007, but the number of executions since 2013 stabilized or even increased. Dui Hua also reported that an increase in the number of Uighur executions likely offset the drop in the number of Han Chinese executed.