Chinese Law Blog promotes legal scholarship with the aim to develop a deeper understanding of China and to facilitate open dialogue between the East and the West. Mainly sourcing from the Chinese Law eJournal edited by the Philip K. H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law, the Blog selects and posts the most cutting-edge research on Chinese law on a near daily basis. It will also track pertinent news, reports, activities, and events that contribute insights into the Chinese legal system.

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When a Judicial Mistake Went Viral: The Diffusion of Law in China

Posted on Thu, Dec. 1, 2022

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Chao Xi, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Yingcheng Qi, Jilin University

Ruobing Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Ning Cao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Earlier anecdotal evidence suggests that judicially-developed doctrines, concepts, principles, norms and practices are disseminated not only downwards, but also upwards and horizontally, among Chinese courts. Methodologically, however, the rejection of the common law notion of precedents by China’s civil law tradition has rendered any attempt to quantitatively track the dissemination of legal information an unrewarding exercise. The spread – and citations by mistake – of a non-existent judicial interpretation across all four levels of the Chinese judiciary has offered a rare window into the diffusion of law in China. The authors present a first quantitative data-based evidence that hierarchical relationships between courts are at work in channeling information in the Chinese judiciary, particularly at the basic and intermediate levels. They also empirically demonstrate the role of cultural and geographical bonds in facilitating the dissemination of information among Chinese courts.

The Imaginaries of Regulatory Spaces in an Age of Administrative Discretion: Social Credit ‘in’ or ‘as’ the Cage of Regulation of Socialist Legality

Posted on Thu, Dec. 1, 2022

Larry Catá Backer, Pennsylvania State University

Social credit can be understood as the building blocks for a legality based on the quantification of objectives and expectations that target people, groups, activity, and their interactions in all spheres of human collective organization. Backer’s research asks a straightforward question: in what ways are social credit systems embedded into the conceptualization and implementation of socialist legality. Two sub-questions follow: (1) how does that embedding shape the character of social credit ‘as’ or ‘in’ the cage of regulation through which the rule of law structures of Chinese constitutionalism are ordered; and (2) in what ways does the implementation of social credit through platforms change or displace traditional forms of the administration of law. Backer’s paper undertakes a close reading of the progression of State Council SCS White Papers in the context of the recent State Council White Papers on the construction and characteristics of Socialist Democracy and Political Parties in China. The object is to theorize ideologically authoritative Socialist Legality expressed as both the law of and a law for social credit under the leadership and guidance of the Communist Party of China. Lastly, the consequences of this interlinking are explored.

Work or Crook: The Socioeconomic Consequences of the Export Slowdown in China

Posted on Thu, Dec. 1, 2022

Hong Ma, Tsinghua University

Yu Pan, Tsinghua University

Mingzhi Xu, Peking University

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The authors highlight a lesser-known consequence of the remarkable slowdown in global trade growth in recent years: the rise of criminal activities. Applying the textual analysis to millions of judgment documents at all levels of courts in China, the authors find higher crime rates in cities that experience a more severe export slowdown. The effects are more pronounced in regions that specialize in manufacturing, that have a larger share of the young and migrant population. Regarding types of crime, larger effects are found in resource appropriation activities such as robbery, stealing, defraudation, counterfeiting, and intellectual property infringement, as well as in criminal activities involving violence, felony traffic offenses, drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Negative export shocks also cause shrinking job opportunities, declining labor earnings, and rising labor disputes, suggesting that a weakened manufacturing labor market lowers the opportunity costs of committing a crime. Alternative mechanisms, such as spending on stability maintenance, appear to play less of a role. The paper’s estimates indicate that if China’s export had maintained an annual growth rate as high as in 2011, the crime rate would have decreased by 9.5% from the current level.

Uncovering Trade Secrets in China: An Empirical Study of Civil Litigation from 2010 to 2020

Posted on Thu, Dec. 1, 2022

Jyh-An Lee, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Jingwen Liu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Haifeng Huang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

The importance of trade secrets has been increasingly recognized by both policymakers and industry players in China. This said, the country’s trading partners and foreign investors have perceptions that trade secret protection there is far from adequate. These perceptions are rooted largely in the unsatisfactory plaintiff win rates, the low awarded damages and the excessive burden-of-proof requirements that trade secret owners are subjected to by China. Although these issues have been controversial for more than two decades, relevant debates have been framed, without empirical support, as simply the perceptions of diverse stakeholders. To help bridge the gaps in this debate, the authors investigate all published civil cases pertaining to trade secret misappropriation in China from 2010 to 2020. In analyzing the empirical data, they present various findings that shed considerable light on patterns of trade secret protection in China during the 2010–2020 period.

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Judicial Independence, Local Protectionism, and Economic Integration: Evidence from China

Posted on Thu, Dec. 1, 2022

Ernest Liu, Princeton University

Yi Lu, Tsinghua University

Wenwei Peng, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Shaoda Wang, University of Chicago

The authors show that judicial independence can reduce local protectionism and foster cross-regional economic integration. Their research exploits a judicial independence reform in China with staggered roll-out since 2014. The reform removed local governments’ control over local courts’ financial and personnel decisions, thereby substantially improving local courts’ independence. The authors find that local defendants’ rate of winning court cases against non-local plaintiffs declined by 7.0% after the reform. The effect is mainly driven by improvements in the quality of judicial decisions and is more salient for politically connected local defendants. Over time, the reduction in local protectionism encouraged smaller non-local firms to file lawsuits against larger local firms. The authors also find that the decline in local protectionism could attract 8.4% more inward investment flows into reformed localities. This has the potential to increase China’s GDP by 2.3% when the judicial independence reform is implemented nationwide.