The Chinese legal system

6.01The People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’/‘China’) is situated in Eastern Asia, bounded by the Pacific in the East. The third largest country in the world, after Canada and Russia, it has an area of 9.6 million square kilometres, or one-fifteenth of the world’s landmass. China is a united and multi-ethnic country, with a unitary system of government yet a multi-tiered legal system. The development of the current legal system began in the early 1980s. China has a long tradition of civil law systems dating back to the Qing Dynasty. This tradition has to a large extent been maintained to the present day. There is a vast network of laws and regulations in China. As of 2010, there are a total of 236 national laws, more than 690 administrative regulations and more than 8,600 local laws and regulations.

6.02The main sources of the law in China include the laws enacted by the National People’s Congress (‘NPC’), which have the highest authority, administrative regulations enacted by the State Council, which cannot be in conflict with statutes, and local laws and regulations enacted by provincial legislatures and governments. The case law of courts and tribunals are not official sources of law, although decisions of the Supreme People’s Court are used in practice to guide lower courts when the law is unclear.