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Supreme People’s Court Developments, December 2024-January 2025

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from the report on the 2025 Central Political-Legal Work Conference on one of the SPC’s websites

See below a brief summary of recent developments  (or at least the principal recent developments) at the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) in January 2025 (as of January 19, the date of publication of this post) and December 2024.

January 2025

  1. On January 8th, the Party leadership heard the SPC Party Group’s report on the SPC’s work, along with those of other institutions.  I mention the requirement for this report in my 2024 article;

certain phrases (such as “report to a superior on their work” [shuzhi 述职] imply a hierarchical relationship between the SPC and the Central Political-Legal Committee and the Party Center. The fact that the SPC reports to the Party leadership can be seen in public reports on the leadership of the political-legal institutions meeting with Xi Jinping and other senior leaders before the annual sessions of the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, although the materials actually submitted to the Party leadership are not publicly accessible.)

2.  January is when many important conferences are held that have an impact on the work of the courts: the Central Political-Legal Work Conference (中央政法工作会议) and the National Conference of Higher Court Presidents （Higher Court Presidents Conference 全国高级法院院长会议),  at which the spirit of the Political-Legal Work Conference is transmitted and the goals for judicial work in 2025 are announced. The SPC has held this conference annually for many years. In the recent historical past (the early 1990’s, for example), the Higher Court Presidents Conference was called the National Court Work Conference.

3. Policy documents: 

a. In early January, the SPC and the All-China Federation of Overseas Chinese (Overseas Chinese Federation 中国侨联权益保障部) issued a joint policy document on the strengthening the judicial protection work of the interests of overseas Chinese and returned overseas Chinese and their families in the New Era (关于加强新时代侨益司法保护工作的意见), and related reference cases.  The document seeks to ease litigation formalities for these groups and promote resolving disputes through mediation, among other matters, such as improving research on Overseas Chinese-related issues, such as through establishing a research base, as has been done with other issues.  The title of this document differs from Zhou Qiang era policy documents, but the goal of providing judicial support for an important national policy goal is the same. 

The SPC’s Research Office led the drafting of this document, in cooperation with the Overseas Chinese Federation.  This responsibility is consistent with the role of the Research Office, which deals with many legal policy and cross-internal institutional matters, such as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan-related issues and the transition to the Civil Code.  It does not hear cases.

This is the first joint policy document between the SPC and Overseas Chinese Federation. Closer cooperation between the two institutions began in 2018, with 30 courts piloting closer cooperation with local Overseas Chinese Federations, and with the 2020 establishment of a “general-to-general” online mediation mechanism (the SPC has established this type of mechanism with the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other institutions).    The policy document is linked to language in recent Party Plenums on protecting the rights of returned Overseas Chinese and Overseas Chinese and their families.

b. Opinions of the Supreme People’s Court on Serving Technological Innovation with High-quality Trial Services 最高人民法院关于以高质量审判服务保障科技创新的意见.  The press conference report is here.  China IP Law Update’s summary in English is here.  If time had permitted, I would discuss the links in this document with the recent Party Plenum and other Party initiatives.

4. Judicial interpretations:

a. The SPC issued its second interpretation of the Marriage and Family Part of the Civil Code, aimed at addressing common troublesome issues facing the courts, such as property division when a cohabiting couple split, many issues relating to divorcing couples, including property division and ownership of a company established by a couple.  To provide further guidance on applying the interpretation, the SPC issued typical cases. This interpretation provides important insights into family law issues in current Chinese society.  

b.  The SPC joined with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate to issue the Interpretation of Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Attacks on Police Officers (关于办理袭警刑事案件适用法律若干问题的解释).  From the provisions of this interpretation,  the confusion lower-level procuratorates and courts had about the application of Article 277 of the Criminal Law is apparent.

5. Other typical cases issued in January included: one on protecting natural reserves and national parks; another on punishing rural saohei (underworld forces) crimes; protecting the rights and interests of foreign investors; and refusing to pay wages (6200+ cases in the past four years)

6. The SPC established its Judges’ Disciplinary Committee, with President Zhang Jun as the chair.  At the first meeting, he noted that the establishment of a judges’ disciplinary committee and the implementation of a judges’ disciplinary system are political requirements for implementing the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee.  In 2021, I published a book chapter on Chinese judicial disciplinary developments, available here.

December 2024

December is the end of the year, so the SPC always issues many documents–judicial interpretations, policy documents, guiding and typical cases etc. at year’s end.  2024 was no exception. Among the documents worth noting:

  1. Judicial interpretations and meeting minutes

a. The SPC and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued meeting minutes (conference summary) on bankruptcy (insolvency)  and reorganization of listed companies.  From the document number, it appears that the SPC took the lead in drafting it and it provides an update to a 2012 conference summary that the SPC issued itself. A DeHeng law firm partner comments here on the meeting minutes. The CSRC is soliciting public comments on Regulatory Guidelines for Listed Companies No. 11 – Matters Related to Bankruptcy and Reorganization of Listed Companies (this link contains the text and an explanation).  

b. On December 25, the SPC issued a Decision on Amending the Supreme People’s Court’s Regulations on Acknowledgement and Execution of Civil Judgments from Taiwan Area Courts, Chinese original 最高人民法院关于修改《最高人民法院关于认可和执行台湾地区法院民事判决的规定》的决定.  An English language summary is available here.  From a quick look, most amendments are procedural or unsurprising. Some reflect amendments to the Civil Procedure Law or codifying court practice. The provision “the people’s court shall make a ruling not to acknowledge a civil judgment if acknowledging it would violate fundamental principles of state laws, such as the one-China principle, or undermine state sovereignty, security, or social public interests” is consistent with analogous provisions and codifies what has been court practice.

2.  Guiding cases: on December 25, the SPC issued six guiding cases on state compensation issues, some of which provide glimpses of problems with prison management; On December 24, the SPC issued the first group of guiding cases on labor issues.

3. Typical cases: The SPC issued many typical cases in December 2024. As I mentioned previously, President Zhang Jun favors using typical cases to guide the lower courts in correctly applying the law.

The SPC issued typical  cases on: the protection of the rights and interests of the elderly; administrative public interest litigation (second group), issued jointly by the SPC and SPP;  “one letter and two books”  labor law supervision, issued jointly by the SPC, the SPP and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions;  wage arrears, issued in cooperation with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security;  two groups of financial loan dispute mediation cases, issued by the  State Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau and the SPC, with one case providing a model for dealing with non-performing microloan cases; rights and interests of Taiwan compatriots, linked to the Party’s policy on promoting cross-straits integration and development; crimes involving counterfeit safety production qualification certificates (linked to a policy document issued in July, 2024 that does not appear to be publicly available (关于进一步加强安全生产资格证书涉假案件刑事审判工作的通知)); petty corruption (each case provides insights into the world of official corruption); punishing illegal production, sales, and use of eavesdropping and stealing equipment, with several cases involving the hidden filming (and marketing of those films) of people having sex in hotel rooms; inheritance disputes (first  and second group); criminal punishment of illegal fishing; and traffic accident liability.

3. Policy documents: Guiding Opinions on Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Trial Work and Promoting the Substantial Resolution of Contradictions and Disputes （关于在审判工作中促进提质增效 推动实质性化解矛盾纠纷的指导意见).  This document focuses on civil and administrative disputes, promoting mediation (Fengqiao Experience) and the resolution of the substance of disputes (as discussed here).  I will draw on this document in a forthcoming article.

4. Plans: 

a. the SPC issued the Sixth Five-Year Judicial Reform Outline.  This article links to the text of the Outline and the related press release. I will publish an article later this year providing a summary and analysis of this document. 

b.  the SPC issued the National Court Education and Training Plan (2024-2028).  I analyzed the previous two plans here and here.  Training of judges handling foreign-related matters receives special attention (see my earlier analysis).

5.  National People’s Committee (NPC) Standing Committee’s Recording & Review:  SPC judicial interpretations and other judicial documents must be filed with the NPC Standing Committee. At the end of 2023, the NPC SC adopted a decision strengthening the recording and review mechanism (see the NPC Observer’s analysis). On 22 December 2024, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee gave its view in its annual report on Recording and Review that a July 2024 Supreme People’s Court interpretation that directed lower courts to retroactively apply a new provision in the recently revised Company Law concerning equity transfers,  controversial in the business community,  was inconsistent with the Legislation Law. The Legislative Affairs Commission stated that the “[they] will urge the relevant judicial interpretation-making authorities to take appropriate measures to properly handle the matter.”  The SPC issued a follow-up interpretation two days after the annual report was made public， signaling that the SPC had been previously been informed.  Although the problematic July 2024 interpretation must have been reviewed by the Legislative Affairs Commission in draft form before it was approved by the SPC judicial committee, as required by Article 18 of the SPC’s Judicial Interpretation Work Provisions, it appears that that whichever office of the Legislative Affairs Commission initially reviewed the SPC’s draft and the office responsible for recording and review took different views. 

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Thank you, subscribers, for your patience.  The blog will transition from being completely researched and written by me (including discussions with knowledgeable persons and experienced judges, for the avoidance of doubt) sometime after Chinese New Year. I plan to involve my research assistants more in analysis and writing, although I have at least one long analytical blogpost that I will complete soon.   I want to focus on consolidating and developing my research in longer pieces.

 

conference summary, judicial documents, judicial interpretations

Guide to Supreme People’s Court Materials (2)–“Understanding & Application” Publications

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Understanding and Application Publications in several forms

Late last year, some followers asked me to describe the principal sources for Supreme People’s Court’s (SPC) research. This is the second of several posts,  as few (particularly outside of China) seem to be aware of the range of publicly available publications of the SPC and its many affiliated entities.  The second set of publications I’ll introduce contains the phrase  “understanding and application” (理解与适用).

What are “understanding and application” publications?

The understanding and application publications explain and provide further background to the following types of SPC documents:

  • SPC interpretations (司法解释), either drafted only by the SPC or with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP);
  • SPC meeting minutes (conference summaries) (会议纪要); and
  • SPC (or SPC and SPP) policy documents entitled Opinion (意见).

The authors of “understanding and application” publications are principally the drafters of the documents in question. In China, the audience of these publications are judges in that substantive area, lawyers, and possibly in-house counsel.  For some unknown reason, academics, including law students, are less familiar with these publications. However, these publications are relevant to researching, writing, and peer-reviewing articles or reports on topics that focus on any of these documents.

The publications are often issued as articles in one of the SPC’s online or print publications, listed below. The understanding and application of the most lengthy document are published as books,  such as the two-volume books on the understanding and application of the judicial interpretation of the Civil Procedure Law (in the photo above) and separately, the Criminal Procedure Law. Books can be searched on the People’s Court Press website.

The content usually includes details on the drafting history of the document, policy background, and the meaning of the clauses.  If an “understanding and application” publication is in book form, it generally provides commentary on each article.  Sometimes an understanding and application publication discusses the competing views related to a particular clause in a document, such as the understanding and application publication on the 2019 Minutes of the National Court Work Conference for Civil and Commercial Trials (全国法院民商事审判工作会议纪要).

The analogous publication for the National Symposium on Foreign-Related Commercial and Maritime Trial Work incorporates some model cases and discusses relevant non-Chinese legislation and case law, in addition to relevant Chinese legislation, the views of relevant institutions, and court practice. For example, on the scope of the phrase “外国法院” (foreign court) in that book, the authors mention that when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was consulted on the draft of that document, it took the view that “foreign” did not include courts of international organizations such as European Union’s Unified Patent Court. It mentions during the negotiation of the Hague Judgments Convention, the recognition and enforcement of the judgments of such courts was controversial so that in China, the recognition and enforcement of the judgments of such courts await further research.

Understanding and application articles are published in one of the following places:

  1. the SPC  official website (court.gov.cn), the Chinese courts website (chinacourt.org), and sometimes the China International Commercial Court website (cicc.court.gov.cn);
  2. the SPC journal Renmin Sifa 人 民司法 [People’s Justice];
  3.  the National Judges College’s academic journal Falv Shiyong 法律适用 [Application of Law]; and
  4. journals of specialized SPC divisions (such as Reference to Criminal Trial, the journal of the five criminal divisions, 刑事审判参考, previously mentioned here).

These articles are often republished on the websites or WeChat accounts of lower courts and sometimes other institutions and can be searched on the Internet or through WeChat search.

Additional examples:

《全国法院毒品案件审判工作会议纪要》的理解与适用 (the Understanding and Application of the Meeting Minutes of the National Courts Symposium on the Trial of Drug-Related Crimes ), published in  Falv Shiyong 法律适用 [Application of Law, the National Judges College’s academic journal]–explaining the 2022 Meeting Minutes of the National Courts Symposium on the Trial of Drug-Related Crimes (the Kunming Meeting) 全国法院毒品案件审判工作会议纪要.  On the drafting history of the document, for example,  before the conference, the article states that the drafters (from the SPC’s #5 Criminal Division) solicited comments from relevant SPC divisions/chambers, various high people’s courts, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security and relevant experts and scholars. The draft was further amended based on comments at the conference, including from other institutions that attended the symposium, and subsequently comments were solicited from relevant divisions of the SPC, the SPP, the Ministry of Public Security, the General Administration of Customs, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

最高法解释起草者谈《关于办理组织、强迫、引诱、容留、介绍卖淫刑事案件适用法律若干问题的解释》的理解与适用 (The Understanding and Application of the [2017] “Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Organizing, Compelling, Enticing, Sheltering, and Brokering Prostitution,” published originally in Reference to Criminal Trial #115, but republished on a WeChat public account of a local public security bureau. The section on the interpretation’s drafting history reveals that in the course of drafting, the #4 Criminal Division held discussions with the Public Security Bureau (治安局) of the Ministry of Public Security, some provincial public security bureaus and some city and county public security organs’ public security departments many times, as well as with experts. The Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress later held a coordination meeting (协调会) with relevant ministries and commissions, indicating that the relevant authorities had differing views on the draft’s content. When those issues were resolved, the SPP agreed to the draft and to issue the interpretation jointly, after which the judicial committee of the SPC and the procuratorial committee of the SPP approved the issuance of the interpretation.

One small example of the relevance of these articles and books to scholarship is the recent draft article, posted on SSRN:  From Visibility to Shadows: The Impact of Police Discretion on Prostitution in Response to Legal Changes, which considers the impact of police discretion on prostitution regulation in China, following the issuance of the 2017  judicial interpretation discussed above. The authors describe the judicial interpretation several times as “an external policy change (a change in judicial interpretation) that was outside the police’s influence.”  However, a review of the legislative history described above reveals that the drafting of the interpretation heavily involved the Ministry of Public Security and local level public security bureaus.  It can be surmised that neither the authors nor the workshop commentators on the draft article were aware of the possible relevance of “understanding and application” articles. This post seeks to draw the attention of both scholars and practitioners to these publications so that advocates and authors can refer to these publications as appropriate and commentators will know of their existence.