Criminal defense lawyer

China boasts one of the fastest growing economies in history. Even  with  an  estimated 1.3 billion people, China is hurtling into the twenty-first century at breakneck speed, all the while changing from an orthodox communist society to what it calls a “socialist free market” system. This means people can no longer rely on the government to provide job security, housing, health care, and schooling. It also means that  there  are  tremendous  opportunities  to  make  money  for  those equipped, inclined, and positioned to grab them. And with China's 20- year-old policy of gaige kaifang, awkwardly translated as "Opening Up and Reform," China is seeking to learn from the rest of the world to accelerate its growth and progress in every area. 

As it moves toward a socialist free market economy, China is experiencing new types of crimes as well as crimes of a magnitude that did not exist under more totalitarian communist rule. Public corruption, economic crime, computer crime, narcotics trafficking, robbery, and murder are all more prevalent than they were 20 years ago. China's criminal justice system is burdened with the dual challenges of increased crime and the need for modernization.


In the legal field, as well as in other fields, China wants to take what it considers to be its rightful place as a leader of nations in the twenty-first  century. This means  bringing  its  justice  system  up  to international standards of fairness, which will not be an easy task. Since the end of the imperial era in 1911, China has struggled to create a workable legal system. The nation’s legal institutions had very little opportunity to develop during much of the twentieth century amidst the chaos of civil wars, World War II, and disruptive political campaigns. The last and most chaotic of these political movements was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which began in the mid-1960s and lasted through much of the 1970s. During the Cultural Revolution, virtually all legal institutions were abolished. There were no courts, no prosecutors, no lawyers, and no law schools. Since the reform era began in 1979 under Deng Xiaoping, legal institutions have slowly been reestablished. Law schools reopened and judicial and procuratorial institutions were recreated.


While the concept of "rule of law"  (yifa zhiguo)  is now official policy of both the Chinese Communist Party and the government, it would be more accurate to describe the rule of law as a long-term goal. China's legal system is, in fact, very much a work in progress, as this survey of the criminal justice system intends to show.

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