Chinese Law and Politics Blog

Position: China Country Director, Public Interest Law Institute

The Public Interest Law Institute (PILI) is seeking to fill the new position of Country Director, China. Leading candidates will be lawyers with demonstrated expertise and interest in legal reform and public interest law in China, as well as strong project management skills.

PILI has two major objectives in China: 1) to promote the provision of pro bono legal services to public interest organizations by developing a clearinghouse to match them with law firms; and 2) to encourage strategic litigation and other advocacy tools for advancing the rights of women, migrants and other vulnerable populations. For more information on PILI’s work, see their website at www.pili.org.

China Amends Law on Lawyers

On October 28, 2007, the standing committee of the National People’s Congress amended the Law on Lawyers, according to a Xinhua article of the same date. The law marginally changes the rules governing the legal profession in China.  It also introduces additional protections of unclear practical importance for lawyers representing their clients.

Beijing Court Applies Urban Standards to Calculate Compensation Award for Death of Migrant

A Beijing intermediate court overturned a lower court decision and applied urban standards to calculate the death compensation award for a migrant killed in a traffic accident, according to an October 24, 2007 article carried on the People’s Net website.

Families of long-term migrants living in Chinese urban areas, but who still have rural hukou (household registration) status, often receive significantly less compensation than families of corresponding urban hukou holders killed in similar (or the same) accident. The legal basis for this discriminatory treatment lies in a 2003 judicial interpretation by the Supreme People's Court, but it reflects a deeper set of institutional biases that link a range of legal rights and public benefits to individuals' hukou identification rather than their actual place of residence. [For more information, see the topic paper of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China regarding the Chinese hukou system.]

The Beijing decision is an example of at least one court's willingness to flexibly apply relevant legal standards in practice, depart from a bright-line test based on hukou identification, and use higher urban compensation standards to ensure equitable death compensation awards for the families of long-term migrants living in urban areas. 

Zhao Shukai: A Quarter-Century of Peasant Petitions

The China Elections and Governance website has reposted a nice article written by Zhao Shukai, researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, titled "A Quarter-Century of Peasant Petitions."   The article summarizes his experiences dealing with citizen petitions.

Two points caught my eye. First, Zhao notes that in the 1980s, collective petitions of large groups of petitioners or extreme behavior on the part of petitioners was relatively unknown, but this began to shift in the 1990s, as Chinese petitioners began to adopt much more organized and radicalized tactics to draw official attention to their complaints.

Second, Zhao proposes that institutional reform is necessary to address the root problems associated with citizen petitions.  Specifically, he proposes concentrating authority for responding to citizen petitions in local people’s congresses, and making their oversight of governmental affairs meaningful.

Both of these points have been made as well by other Chinese and foreign scholars working on citizen petitioning in China.  (See, for example, this article, this article, and this conference). But it always bears repeating, particularly by scholars as knowledgeable as Zhao.

Position: Administrative Coordinator, Yale China Law Center

The China Law Center at Yale Law School is seeking applicants for an open position of Administrative Coordinator in the Center’s New Haven office. This position requires performing a wide range of administrative and fiscal responsibilities at The China Law Center, including organizing administrative support for projects, multi-day workshops and conferences in China, managing activities related to visiting Chinese and other scholars and students, and providing research on a variety of topics. The Administrative Coordinator also assists with the administration of the Center’s complex fiscal arrangements.

President Hu Jintao Calls for "Progressively" Equalizing Standards for Rural-Urban Legislative Representation

President Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, called for "progressively" equalizing standards for representation of the rural and urban population in China’s legislative organs, local people's congresses (LPC), in his work report to the 17th Party Congress on October 15.  If implemented, this measure would represent a step toward addressing one source of institutional discrimination against Chinese rural residents.

Under the PRC Election Law of the National People’s Congress and Local People’s Congresses, rural LPC deputies represent four times as many constituents as their urban counterparts. This increases the relative weight of urban interests in Chinese legislative bodies, but leaves migrant and rural interests underrepresented.

Position: Intern at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China is currently soliciting resumes for spring internships (paid) in Washington , D.C. , working on Chinese human rights and rule of law issues.  Interns must be U.S. citizens.

Applications for spring internships must be received by November 1, 2007.  Further details are available below and on the Commission’s Web site at www.cecc.gov.

Interested applicants should send a cover letter and resume to the CECC via e-mail to Judy.wright@mail.house.gov or via fax at (202) 226-3804, attention:  Judy Wright, Director of Administration.