Chinese lawyers promote rule of law in a new era

Editor’s note:
Chinese lawyers have been playing an ever-increasing role in promoting the rule of law alongside their professional development since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012.

(I) Top-level design

November 2013
- The 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee made reforming and improving China’s lawyer system an important part of deepening overall reform.

October 2014
- The 4th Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee adopted a decision on major issues concerning the implementation of overall law-based governance, outlining the development of Chinese lawyers.

September 2015
- The central leading group for deepening overall reform adopted guidelines for deepening the reform of China’s lawyer system.

May 2016
- The central leading group for deepening overall reform adopted guidelines for developing foreign-related legal services.

October 2019
- The 4th Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee specified requirements for improving the socialist lawyer system with Chinese characteristics.

Since December 2020
- The CPC Central Committee has issued 3 guidelines on efforts to build a law-based society, a law-based country and a law-based government, specifying lawyers' role in these efforts.

(II) Enhancing Party Building

October 2017
- The Leading Party Members' Group of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) established a Party committee leading all Chinese lawyers.

In recent years
–Law firms having three or more Party members are required to set up a Party branch.
–Law firms having less than three Party members are required to set up joint Party branches with other law firms.
–Over 13,000 Party branches have been set up at Chinese law firms so far.

2018
–The All China Lawyers Association (ACLA) and its provincial and prefectural-level branches incorporated Party building into their charters.

(III) Contributing to high-quality social and economic development

During the first half of 2020

–Over 62,000 lawyers across China set up over 3,300 legal service teams to provide enterprises with over 79,000 legal suggestions on work and production resumption amid COVID-19.

–Over 40,000 lawyers advised the public 650,000 times online or through hotlines.

During the battle against COVID-19
–Chinese lawyers donated at least 258 million yuan ($40.48 million).

At present, Chinese lawyers:
–handle over 11 million legal matters every year.
–serve as legal counsels for about 800,000 Party and government agencies, people’s organizations, enterprises, and public institutions.

April 2021
–The MOJ and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC) released guidelines for enhancing ties between law firms, chambers of commerce, and county-level federations of industry and commerce.
–Over 12,000 law firms have so far partnered with over 16,000 chambers of commerce and over 1,500 county-level federations of industry and commerce, and organized over 85,000 activities to provide them with legal services.

In recent years
- About 200,000 lawyers and primary-level legal workers are acting as legal counsels for 640,000 villages and communities across China.

Since 2019
- The MOJ has mobilized lawyers to contribute to the national poverty elimination campaign.

(IV) Contributing to overall law-based governance

2017
–The MOJ and the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) launched a pilot program to promote lawyers’ participation in every criminal case.

So far
–Over 2,300 county-level regions, or 80% of the national total, have implemented the program.
–66% of criminal cases nationwide have seen lawyers’ participation.

At present
There are over 8,800 lawyer-established mediation offices nationwide, which
–involve over 10,000 law firms
–have over 55,000 lawyer mediators
–have mediated over 300,000 cases

Participating in State affairs
Over 9,000 lawyers serve as:
–deputies to Party and people’s congresses and political advisers at all levels
–38 of them are national lawmakers and political advisers

Raising people’s legal awareness
–Chinese lawyers have held nearly online and offline 50,000 lectures on the Civil Code. Over 10 million people attended the offline lectures.

Better law-practicing environment

September 2015
–The SPC, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the MOJ jointly released guidelines for protecting lawyers’ right to practice law.

April 2018
–The SPC and the MOJ released a circular requiring courts to safeguard lawyers’ rights during all phases of court trials.

October 2019
–The MPS and the MOJ released a document on lawyers’ right to meet with suspects and defendants at detention houses.

As of June 2021
–Lawyers associations nationwide had resolved 1,252 infringements upon lawyers’ rights.

2021
–The SPC and the MOJ launched online information platforms to provide lawyers with one-stop litigation service.

(V) Cultivating high-quality lawyers

Since 2016
–The All China Lawyers Association has trained over 1,200 young lawyers.
–The MOJ and the ACLA have been training lawyers who speak both Putonghua (standard Mandarin) and languages spoken by ethnic minorities in western China.

November 2018
–The ACLA released guidelines on the development of young lawyers.

May 2019
–The MOJ held a training session for 94 lawyers who practice law in 68 counties.

(VI) Shouldering social responsibilities

Since 2009
–The MOJ has dispatched over 1,200 lawyers to frontier, under-developed and ethnic minority-inhabited regions through a legal aid volunteer campaign called “1+1”.

Since 2017
–The MOJ, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the ACLA have mobilized 440,000 lawyers to organize 53,000 pro bono legal service activities for migrant workers, helping over 30 million of them recover 3.06 billion yuan in economic losses.

Since 2019
–The MOJ has dispatched over 200 lawyers to lawyer-less counties in Tibet autonomous region to offer pro bono legal services to local people.

Every year, Chinese lawyers:
–handle over 900,000 legal aid cases;
–provide free legal services over 1.1 million times for the public.

(VII) Going global
June 2017
– The ACLA started to prepare for the establishment of the Belt and Road International Lawyers Association (BRILA).

December 2019
– The BRILA was officially established with 85 lawyers associations, law firms, legal institutions and lawyers as its founding members.

At present
– The BRILA has 3 branches in Xi’an, Guangzhou and Chengdu and over 1,700 members from 54 countries and regions.

December 2019
– The Global Lawyers Forum was held in Guangzhou.
Ministerial-level judicial officials from 12 countries, 5 international lawyers organizations, heads of lawyers associations in 22 countries and regions, and over 800 other guests from 57 countries and regions attended the event.

April 2021
– The 30th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association was held in Shanghai. Over 600 guests from more than 30 countries and regions attended the event.

The MOJ's efforts to cultivate foreign-related lawyers:
- held a lawyer qualification exam for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in 2021
- launched a master’s program in foreign-related lawyer training in 15 universities which has enrolled 589 students
- held 8 training sessions for 800 foreign-related government and corporate lawyers
- held foreign-related legal service training sessions for nearly 3,000 lawyers