Chinese Law and Politics Blog

Position: Staff Attorney, China Environmental Law Project, NDRC

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) seeks to hire a Staff Attorney to be based in Beijing to work in its China Environmental Law project.

NRDC has worked in China with government agencies, research institutes and civil society organizations to protect the environment for over 10 years.  In China, NRDC is working in the areas of environmental public participation, NGO capacity building, environmental law and litigation, energy efficiency, clean power, green buildings, and public health.  It works through research, international exchanges and trainings, collaboration on the formulation of policies, regulations and standards and a variety of other approaches. 

State Council White Paper Emphasizes Importance of Political Consultation Under Party Control

The Information Office of the State Council issued a white paper on the Chinese political party system on November 15, according to a Xinhua article issued on the same date (English, Chinese).

The white paper emphasizes the dominant role of the Communist Party in the Chinese political system, while stressing the importance of political consultation between Party and non-Party members closely allied with Party goals, including members from China's eight minor "democratic" parties.

The white paper is the latest in a series of Party and government directives that emphasize the importance of increased participation and consultation between Party and non-Party members, under Party control, as a means to improve national governance. 

Research Opportunity: Nanjing

The Institute for International Research at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) is a joint research initiative of Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University and located in Nanjing, China.

This competition is open to professors, associate professors and assistant professors, as well as established scholars holding non-faculty appointments. PhD students whose dissertation research requires work in Nanjing may also apply. While no financial support is available, fellows will have an affiliation with the Center and be a part of the HNC community.

Yu Jianrong on Social Unrest in China

What causes social unrest in China? Institutional failure.

That’s the message delivered by Yu Jianrong, Director of the Institute of Rural Development at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a series of speeches in California during late October.  His comments underline the extent to which social unrest in China is directly linked to institutional problems that prevent the Chinese legal and political systems from effectively responding to mounting citizen grievances. 

17th Party Congress Policy Directives Spread Through Public Security Apparatus

     The Communist Party committee in the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) issued a notice calling for local MPS officials to implement policy directions established at the 17th Party Congress, according to a summary of the notice posted on the Chinese government’s website on November 6.

    The notice offers a good example of how centralized Party directives are transmitted through the Chinese government apparatus. It also offers some insight into the thinking of Party officials with regard to ongoing public security issues. 

Is Yunnan "Eliminating" the Hukou System?

Short answer – no. At least one website has reported that recent reforms undertaken by the provincial government of Yunnan will "eliminate" the household registration (hukou) system. This isn't the case.

The announced Yunnan reforms will eliminate the distinction between "agricultural" and "non-agricultural" hukou status, according to an October 25 Xinhua article.  Similar reforms have been announced by a number of other provinces and municipalities.  But they do not affect the requirement that migrants obtain local hukou in urban areas to receive public services and benefits on an equal basis with other urban residents.

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.