On China Law and Policy, Elizabeth Lynch critiques a new report from the Brookings Institute on legal reforms in China:
Li and Lee offer four developments that they claim bode well for legal development in China: (1) an increasing body of law, with new laws being written and old ones amended; (2) the astronomical growth in the number of lawyers; (3) increasing economic autonomy and a greater sense of professionalism in the legal profession; and (4) the rapidly rising number of legally-trained government officials.
Li and Lee cite the huge number of laws that China currently has on the books (231 individual laws, 600 administrative regulations, 7,000 local rules and regulations, and a sizeable number of departmental regulations), but only pay passing attention to China’s difficulty in implementing laws on the local level, arguably the most important aspect of a functioning legal system. To be sure, drafting laws is the first step; but without meaningful and consistent implementation, the value of such a large body of law is questionable.
Additionally, Li and Lee look to the increased professionalization of the legal profession as a positive sign. It is true Gavel-LawBookthat the Chinese bar has become more professionalized and lawyers are no longer employees of the State as they were in the 1950s. But Li and Lee make no mention of the fact that the All China Lawyers Association and local bar associations are government-controlled and answer to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). Prof. Jerome Cohen of NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute has consistently commented on this lack of independence of the Chinese bar and has noted the role that the MOJ has played in influencing bar associations to punish rights lawyers that go a bit too far for the government’s taste.
