Monthly Archives: August 2021

Communist Party and the Courts, model cases

The 996 typical cases

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Document heading for the 996 typical cases

On 26 August 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) along with the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) issued a second set of typical (典型 model/exemplary cases). As I have explained before, these are summaries or edited versions of cases, not original labor arbitration or court decisions. These are on overtime labor and personnel disputes (人力资源社会保障部、最高人民法院联合发布超时加班劳动人事争议典型案例) that I’ll call the “996 typical cases,” a central level institutional response to the widespread use of 996 overtime work in the technology sector and elsewhere. The cases themselves are entitled “the second set of typical personnel and labor disputes cases (劳动人事争议典型案例（第二批). The version that the SPC published on its two websites (court.gov.cn and chinacourt.org) lacks the document headers that accompanied the release of the cases. That version had the mutually agreed statement about the cases (joint statement) and the cases themselves. Thankfully for this analysis, the Inner Mongolian Higher People’s Court released a version that includes the headers. The comments below focus not on the rules embedded in the typical cases, but on the SPC’s use of typical (model or exemplary) cases.  These cases are:

  • a product of institutional joint cooperation, as memorialized in a 2017 document mentioned in the joint statement;
  • a typical use of typical cases in the New Era; and
  • Used by the labor arbitration tribunals under the MHRSS system and the courts to unify legal standards.

Institutional joint cooperation

The 996 typical cases are a product of cooperation between the MHRSS and the SPC, as memorialized in the policy document “Opinions of the MHRSS and the SPC on Strengthening the Building of a Mechanism of Connection between Arbitration and Litigation of Labor and Personnel Disputes,  (No. 70, MHRSS)(《关于加强劳动人事争议仲裁与诉讼衔接机制建设的意见》（人社部发〔2017〕70号).  Two quick comments on the cooperation are as follows.

  1. More such cooperation can be predicted in general.  Greater cooperation between the SPC and other government and Party departments is a feature of the New Era, as I mentioned earlier this year. Coordination with other central Party and state organs is a customary function of the SPC that is being repurposed, in part, in the New Era. Coordination with other central organs appears to be an increasingly important part of New Era governance.  Therefore, the statement accompanying the cases stated the following:

In recent years, the MHRSS and the SPC have actively guided the implementation of the “Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of a Cohesive Mechanism for Labor and Personnel Dispute Arbitration and Litigation” , and the cohesion mechanism for adjudication and adjudication has been realized… In the next step, the two departments will continue to jointly develop guidelines, publish cases, and strengthen information comparison, and continue to promote the convergence of adjudication procedures and the unification of the application of law, so as to better achieve an efficient and orderly connection between arbitration and justice, and realize labor disputes. The dispute resolution is an organic unity of political, legal and social effects.

2.  As can be seen from the statement above, we can expect further cooperation between the MHRSS and the SPC in the form of joint guidelines, more typical cases, and information sharing.  All of these are flagged in the 2017 Opinion mentioned above.

What we can see from the document numbers of the 2017 Opinion, the first set of joint typical labor cases and the 996 typical cases is that they all have an MHRSS document number.  (See analysis of the first set of cases here.)That means both the Opinion and the typical cases are an initiative of the MHRSS that required concurrence by the SPC. The Opinion  sets out the agreement between the two institutions:

The departments of HRSS shall positively and voluntarily strengthen communication and coordination with the people’s courts. The people’s courts shall specify that a tribunal [division] or office [庭室] is uniformly responsible.

So we can see from this language that at each level of court, a division (tribunal) or office (likely to be the Research Office) is responsible for liaising with the HRSS authorities.  At the level of the SPC, it is understood to be the Civil Division #1, which is responsible for labor-related issues among many other civil law issues, and within that division, a group of people (likely judges with special competence in labor issues) was involved with liaising with the MHRSS to agree upon a draft version of the statement and the typical cases.  Given the administrative nature of the SPC and previous practice, it seems likely that what was agreed upon at the staff level was reviewed by the head or deputy head of the Civil Division #1 and approved by the SPC vice president in charge of the Civil Division #1. It is likely the cases were cleared at an analogous senior level at MHRSS as well.

As to why these particular cases, it is likely that they are scenarios that regularly occur in the labor arbitration tribunals and the courts, but where decisions are inconsistent because the law is unclear.

Use of Typical Cases in the New Era

The release of the 996 typical cases is a typical use of typical cases in the New Era.  As discussed in further detail last year,  this is part of popularization of law (普法教育), an old development repurposed in the post 4th Plenum of the 19th Party Congress New Era. I first wrote about typical cases in 1993:

 

 

The release of these 996 typical cases is linked to the popularization of law responsibility system set out in this document: General Offices of the Party Central Committee and State Council Opinions on a Popularization of Law Responsibility System of State Organs Regarding “whoever enforces that law, explains the law.” (中共中央办厅　国务院办公厅印发《关于实行国家机关“谁执法谁普法”普法责任制的意见》Section 6 calls for judge, procurators, administrative enforcement personnel, and lawyers to establish a “using cases to explain the law” system.

Therefore MHRSS personnel are encouraged to use cases to explain the law, and the 2017 Opinion encourages MHRSS personnel to cooperate with the SPC in doing so. The message to the general public as set out in the joint statement is:

On the one hand, it reminds employers of the risks of illegal activities and promotes the regulation of labor according to law; on the other hand, it clarifies the expectations of workers’ rights protection and guides workers to protect their rights in a rational way.

Releasing these cases also hits another target for those involved: fulfilling their obligations under the current Party history study and education campaign: “I do real things for the masses”(“我为群众办实事,” therefore in the first sentence of the joint statement).

 996 Typical Cases Used to Unify Legal Standards

What the SPC’s version of the 996 typical cases omitted (likely unintentionally) is guidance from the two institutions on how the 996 typical cases are to be used:  “local [labor] arbitration agencies and people’s courts,  shall refer to it in handling cases.”

Last year’s guidance on case searches clarifies that the lower courts must search  SPC typical cases when doing a similar case search and that these cases are not binding, but for reference, or quite persuasive. These cases will provide guidance to both labor institutions and courts, providing a more unified standard on these overtime issues.  It will also indirectly pressure employers to amend their labor handbooks and change other labor practices to be consistent with these cases.

Concluding thoughts

These cases are not expected to completely resolve the overwork culture in Chinese companies. They are intended to set a clearer standard for the labor arbitration commissions and courts to apply (and lawyers or other advocates to meet), as well as to reduce the number of cases in which courts overturn labor arbitration commission determinations related to overtime and overwork. They also provide societal guidance (社会导向）by providing a timely signal to companies and Chinese society on these issues. They also evidence that the SPC is “strengthening judicial safeguards of people’s livelihood” (加强民生司法保障). Most importantly it shows that the MHRSS and the SPC are doing “real things for the masses.”

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Many thanks to those who commented on an earlier version of this blogpost.

Arrangements, CICC, foreign courts, foreign-related cases

Training foreign-related legal personnel for the Chinese courts

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President Zhou Qiang visiting the University of International Business & Economics

Since the Fourth Plenum of the 19th Party Congress, and especially since President Xi Jinping spoke about the need for China to train foreign-related legal personnel  (涉外法治人才), the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) press, SPC leadership, and others important to the SPC leadership, such as Shen Deyong, former executive vice president of the SPC and current leaders of the CPPCC have reiterated the importance of “foreign-related legal personnel” to China and the people’s courts.  Training “foreign-related legal personnel” is incorporated into the Party’s Plan for Building the Rule of Law (2020-2025), an indication of its importance.  Shen Deyong  criticized the way that “foreign-related legal personnel” is used within government institutions– “team is too small, their numbers are too few, they are scattered and the market is chaotic.””涉外法律服务人才队伍建设还存在一些问题和不足，主要呈现队伍“小”、人才“少”、分布“散”、市场“乱”的特点.  I would add to the issues that he flagged that policies directed towards attracting  “foreign-related legal personnel” to the courts inevitably encounter the special characteristics of the courts’ personnel system as it has evolved since the quota judge reform was implemented, both the training system and especially career advancement from judges assistant to quota judge.

Foreign-related legal personnel policy

The language about increasing “foreign-related legal personnel” in the courts is not new but dates back to at least 2015 and the  Opinion of the Supreme People’s Court on Providing Judicial Services and Safeguards for the Construction of the “Belt and Road” by People’s Courts (BRI Opinion #1). It was reiterated in the 2019  Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Further Providing Judicial Services and Guarantees by the People’s Courts for the “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI Opinion #2) and the 2020 Guiding Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on the People’s Courts Serving and Guaranteeing the Further Opening Up to the Outside World (Open Economy Guiding Opinion). Article 15 of BRI Opinion #1 calls for improving training for Chinese judges on their professional capacity (业务能力) and improving overall judicial quality. Article 38 of BRI Opinion #2 and Article 16 of the Open Economy Guiding Opinion both have language about cooperating with universities to develop training and teaching plans so as to train and prepare a pool of international legal practitioners….”  A knowledgeable person has reminded me that repetition in consecutive documents is an indication of importance (and I would add the difficulty of resolving the problem).

As readers of this blog know, the Chinese courts need “foreign-related legal personnel” in many areas. Those include working on cross-border cases across a broad range of procedural and substantive areas,  undertaking research related to cross-border judicial policy and cross-border legal issues that have an impact on the judiciary, as well as working on a range of issues related to the SPC’s and lower courts’ interactions with the outside world.

Court cooperation with universities

The SPC has designated a number of China’s leading law schools and legal research institutions as Belt & Road research bases, including: the International Law Institute of the China Academy of Social Sciences; Tsinghua University School of Law; Wuhan University School of Law, Southwest University of Political Science and Law; China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law; Dalian Maritime University, and East China University of Political Science and Law. The SPC is thus able to draw on the research capacities of China’s law schools and involve law students in the legal issues facing the Chinese courts. Participating in this research can also motivate students to enter the courts after graduation.

Law students apply to become judges assistants after graduation for a variety of reasons. Some become further interested after internships (see this blogpost on SPC interns–a version with more data may appear later).  Other law school graduates are motivated by presentations by outstanding judges at their law school (SPC Judge Gao Xiaoli’s 2015 talk at the Peking University School of Transnational Law earned her many new fans), while still others recognized that a job “in the system” would resolve their hukou problems and enable them to live in Beijing, Shanghai, or other major cities. Yet others are motivated to use their education in the service of the public. I can say with authority that law graduates with knowledge of transnational law, fluency in English (and other foreign languages) are working as legal assistants in courts all over China.  Recruitment of legal assistants is a local matter, so the #4 Civil Division of the SPC (in charge of foreign commercial matters) and likely the Political Department of the SPC (in charge of personnel) lacks statistics on the number of “foreign-related legal personnel” working in the local courts.

Special characteristics of the courts’ personnel system

I write about the judiciary’s personnel system with some trepidation as I am well aware that my knowledge of the regulatory system is incomplete. (Some of the relevant regulations cited in analyses of the personnel reforms are not accessible to those outside the court system.)   On the issue of placement of junior “foreign-related legal personnel,”  I have not heard from either knowledgeable persons, former students, or other junior personnel in the Chinese court system that specific policies have been implemented within the court system (the Political Department of the SPC is responsible at the national level, and locally, political departments of local courts are responsible) to channel judges assistants recruited from China’s law schools with transnational training and experience into roles in which their academic background can be used and their “foreign-related” legal skills can be developed. In the absence of specific policy, too many local court leaders appear to see the young people with a transnational legal background and experience merely as workers that can be put to work in the national judicial machine (司法民工). Judges assistants from higher courts are sometimes sent down to the local level to work for two years, in line with young cadre development policy.

Training

If the three documents cited above have language about training, it seems likely that a training plan is somewhere in the approval pipeline.  My guess is that this is yet another matter that requires coordination among multiple institutions within the SPC, including the #4 Civil Division–the ones asking for the training to be done, with the Political Division and the National Judges College.  As I wrote last year, a new national court training plan (2019—2023年全国法院教育培训规划)) is underway.  As senior leadership has called for cultivating  “foreign-related legal personnel,” it seems likely that the SPC will eventually issue (perhaps not publicly) a training plan for judges handling all sorts of foreign-related issues, both civil-commercial and criminal.

Career advancement

Another issue for foreign-related legal personnel in the courts is career advancement for judges assistants.  As I mentioned in passing in an earlier blogpost, career advancement from judges assistant to quota judge has slowed. Specific promotion criteria are set locally.   Local studies have been done on the role of the judges assistant but have not surmounted the language barrier (see this one from one of the Chongqing Intermediate People’s Courts)  that provide specific data and specific analysis deriving from local conditions.  From my observations, fixed quotas on the number of judges in a court can mean a talented, educated judges assistant in one court may wait significantly longer than a similarly qualified person in another court to become a judge.

Concluding thoughts

Unless the SPC can evolve better national policy directed towards a career for “foreign-related legal personnel,”  some of them will leave, disappointed with the failure of the judicial system to use their talents, despite the official publicity. There will be many companies and law firms, some dealing with the issues I described previously, that will value them.

 

 

alternative dispute resolution, CICC, diversified dispute resolution, Expert Committee, international commercial court

Brief comments on the China International Commercial Court

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On 29 July, I spoke briefly at an American Society of International Law  webinar entitled “Charting the New Frontiers of International Dispute Resolution in the Asia-Pacific.” The post below is the (slightly edited) text of my comments on the China International Commercial Court (CICC). I have made some of the same points in earlier blogposts and this version includes those links.

Thank you for this opportunity to provide my thoughts on the CICC.  As some people know, I am on the CICC’s international expert committee, but nothing I have to say should be attributed to the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) or the China International Commercial Court (CICC). I’m not going to comment on the numerous articles I have seen either in both English and Chinese but instead focus my remarks on what I understand the focus of the work of the CICC to be now, suggest some reasons, and identify some trends.

The CICC has thus far accepted 18 cases in the three years since it was established.  Although I have never seen official confirmation of this, it appears that when the CICC was approved, it was approved as a part-time court.  It can be seen from the biographical description of each judge that each of them has at least one other full-time responsibility additional to being a CICC judge.  Some of the judges have two other full-time responsibilities.  The Intellectual Property Court of the SPC, is instead is a full-time court—it is unclear whether they have additional headcount. I have not seen a discussion of why one was approved as a part-time court and the other a full-time court—perhaps the leadership decided that the Intellectual Property Court was the one that would make a more important national and international impact, given the critical importance of intellectual property at this stage at China’s development and the range of intellectual property law issues in contention between China and certain of its trading partners.

In my view, the fact that the CICC is not a full-time court—means that the SPC’s #4 Civil Division, which provides leadership for the  CICC, must be strategic about what the CICC does.  Based on the language in some of the recent SPC documents,  particularly the September 2020 policy document on the Open Economy, I surmise that the #4 Civil Division is considering the best way forward with the CICC, as there is this language–“promote the construction of the CICC” (推进最高人民法院国际商事法庭建设). Additionally, the SPC has designated two senior Chinese academics (Shan Wenhua of Xian Jiaotong University and Liu Xiaohong of the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law), who are expert committee members to provide research on this topic.

Based on the type of cases that the CICC has accepted and the language in the end 2019 2nd Belt & Road Opinion and the 2020 Open Economy document, my understanding that the short-medium focus of the CICC is to be a model or guide for China’s lower courts in unifying “foreign-related” substantive and procedural law —it is currently domestically focused, rather than focusing on hearing large numbers of foreign-related cases.

So far, most of the cases that the CICC has accepted have been referred from the lower courts. The CICC will take the cases if it meets its criteria and it can see that the case involves issues regarding which existing law and judicial interpretations are unclear and that involve issues that frequently arise in practice. This can be seen in Articles 22 and 25 of BRI Opinion #2 “and the role of the CICC in providing models and guidance shall be developed… the role of cases in determining rules and guiding behavior shall be leveraged  (发挥国际商事法庭示范引领作用_…，发挥好案例的规则确定和行为指引作用).  Therefore the CICC has accepted and decided at least 5 cases related to arbitration—filling in gaps in Chinese arbitration law and judicial interpretations—and has accepted two more related to demand guarantees/standby letter of credit fraud disputes.  It has also issued a judgment on an issue related to product liability.

A second and it seems underappreciated aspect (outside of China) of the role of the CICC is in providing “models and guidance”– 示范引领作用– to guide the lower courts and to pilot reforms that are replicable (a Chinese judicial reform concept), as stated in Article 22 and 25 of BRI Opinion #2. That can be seen from reports on certain local courts:

  1. The Beijing #4 Intermediate Court—promoting one-stop diversified dispute resolution (多元化解纷纠纷中心), with links to local arbitration (CIETAC & the Beijing Arbitration Commission) & mediation organizations, the goal being for this court to come up with new ideas in international commercial dispute resolution to focus on Beijing’s advantages;
  2. The Suzhou International Commercial Court (approved by the SPC, and involving cooperation with the Singapore government through the China-Suzhou Suzhou Industrial Park )；
  3. Haikou/Hainan also—the SPC’s policy document supporting the Hainan Free Trade Port mentions an international commercial court, although it seems to be less developed.

I would like to mention also that it is possible that whatever guidance is developed may also draw on the memoranda concluded and other best practices discussed at the Standing Forum of International Commercial Courts, of which the SPC is a member.

From what I can see from these local initiatives, the themes may include:

  1. promoting mediation (also in line with SPC policy on mediation taking priority);
  2. Centralizing case acceptance;
  3. Addressing additional arbitration-related issues;
  4. Possibly considering rules regarding more complex commercial disputes.

From my own research and discussions with some local judges, it appears to be early days to see any further guidance coming out of these local courts.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the CICC eventually developing further rules, for example, related to mediation, drawing on the work of the lower courts, as this is a pattern I have seen before in other areas of law with the SPC because it appears CICC regulatory infrastructure is less fully developed in comparison with other commercial courts in other jurisdictions.  Experience from the lower courts could accelerate matters in part.

I surmise that either the CICC or local “international commercial courts” will eventually provide greater legal infrastructure related to what I call “invisible BRI disputes”–the increasing number of cases between two Chinese companies involving projects overseas, particularly in the area of construction engineering, often heard in the Chinese courts—that involve issues such as how to:

  1. find and apply foreign law;
  2. provide information and expertise about foreign technical standards; and
  3. improve the role of expert witnesses (with the necessary expertise) in construction engineering disputes.

These types of disputes raise several of many areas of law that need further work as Chinese companies operate internationally but want to have related disputes heard at home, and China seeks to progress domestic and foreign-related legislation.  I surmise that the Beijing #4 Intermediate Court will eventually come up with some guidance through its collaboration with the Beijing Arbitration Commission and other institutions.

Turning to the expert committee…the expert committee is an institution different from a user committee in jurisdictions such as US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya etc. where they are often required by law and are primarily focused on incorporating input from users, including those practicing lawyers in evolving court rules.  I note that Taiwan involved a user committee in working on its new commercial & intellectual property court. Court rules in China are entirely within the authority of the SPC, and lower courts in practice issue them as well, and there is no compulsory requirement in Chinese legislation for incorporating public input in the course of drafting court rules. The CICC expert committee and other Chinese court expert committees (such as that established by the Beijing Financial Court appear to be established to enable courts to access expertise among the experts on a flexible basis, and it appears intentionally not involving lawyers practicing in China.  The link between the role of the expert committee members and the subject matter competence is weaker than with user committees, and thus far the few formal meetings of the entire expert committee have included speeches making general statements about international commercial dispute resolution in contrast to the more technically focused user committees in the jurisdictions I have mentioned.

From the BRI documents mentioned above that the SPC has issued, it appears that the SPC is still trying to determine a proper role for the expert committee (at least on the foreign side) as I don’t believe the roles mentioned in CICC regulations have turned out to fit with the SPC’s actual needs and the varied backgrounds of the experts. I’ve been in touch with several foreign members of the expert committee, none of whom has been approached by the CICC individually to provide expertise. One of many issues (as I’ve written about before) is that mediation outside China is considered to be its own type of expertise, different from arbitration (an area in which a number of experts are well known). Another question is whether the expert committee is made known internally within the SPC as a platform through which others in the SPC can access foreign expertise.

For all these reasons—the limited time that CICC judges have to devote to specific CICC matters, the focus on progressing Chinese substantive & procedural law through CICC decisions, the possible use of the lower courts to assist the CICC to evolve international commercial rules appropriate for China, and the flexible use of the expert committees–in the short to medium term I see the work of the CICC as more domestically focused, as the SPC does its part to progress Chinese domestic and foreign-related legislation, or as the current slogan has it “统筹推进国内法治和涉外法治.”