By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  At 10 p.m., I got a judge’s call from his office, informing me about the trial date of a case of mine. I was so surprised that he was still in the office so late. “We work late into the night four days a week,” the judge replied in a tired voice.  Making judges work overtime is one of the means for Chinese courts to cope with litigation …

By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  Law graduates, public civil servants, staff members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and veterans are the main sources of candidates for judges in China.  The ongoing judicial reform of Chinese courts is trying to establish a new system for the election of judges. Before the new system is completed, the judges in China currently still come mainly from the aforementioned sources. We will have a special…

Chenyang Zhang On the basis of Chinese traditional judicial system, recent years have seen many newly established Chinese courts. Therefore, it seems difficult for those who are unfamiliar with China’s court system to have a comprehensive understanding of the Chinese court system. In this regard, we depict this latest structure of China court hierarchy. I The four-level system of Chinese courts Chinese courts are divided into four levels and presidents of Chinese courts at different…

Shuo Jiang For many US Dollar funds investing in China, Hong Kong International Arbitration Center (HKIAC) is usually mutually agreed as the seat of arbitration in the dispute resolution clause of the investment agreement. However, in fact, when a dispute occurs, both the investor and the investee find that the HKIAC is not the best institution to resolve such dispute. Therefore, they seek to invalidate such arbitration clauses in Chinese courts. 1. Why do US…

Dennis (Yongquan) Deng As a lawyer, I have been to court for many years and have accumulated experience and lessons. With more and more experience and fewer and fewer lessons, I think I can write something that can be entitled “Successful Experience” rather than “Successful Lessons”. Related Posts by Dennis Deng: Safety and Efficiency, the Interests of Judges: Success in the Chinese Courtroom In the 30 years of frenzied pursuit of money, most people think that…

By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  Foreign litigants are not allowed to use foreign language in Chinese courts, but can request the court to provide an interpreter and/or translator to translate their language into Chinese. Pursuant to the PRC Civil Procedure Law (CPL), the language and characters commonly used in China shall be used when Chinese courts hear a foreign-related civil case, but the litigants may request interpreter and/or translation services at their own…

By Meng Yu &  Guodong Du  In a Chinese court, a lawyer is speaking at a speed ten times slower than normal. Please don’t think of it as the funny sloth scene in the animated film Zootopia, or a slow-motion scene in the movie. The experienced lawyer did so in order that the law clerk could accurately record all his opinions. China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) promulgated the regulations as early as 2010,…