10
Jul

china lawFor the five year plans, i.e. from the year 2006-2010, China has announced that it would continue with the policy of having one child per couple.  This means that each couple is limited to having only one child in China. Shocking? That’s the law in china.

This “one child law” was established by Deng Xiaoping, a Chinese leader in 1979 with the motive of limiting the population growth of communist China. At the time of the establishment of such policy or law, it was designated as a temporary measure to curb the rapidly increasing population growth in China. However, it did not remain as a temporary measure only; the policy continues to be implemented even decades after the formulation.

According to this law, a couple can have only one child. Hence, for subsequent pregnancies, dines, sterilization or abortions are forced on the mother.

This rule is not applied evenly all over China; it is only in the urban areas, groups like the ethnic Han Chinese are encompassed by this rule whereas citizens living in rural areas of China are not encompassed by the rule.

This rule of one child policy by China law is quite efficient and has reduced China’s population growth by as much as 300 million people in the first twenty years of implementation! For a country whose population is estimated to be at 1.3 billion, that is quite a lot of reduction!

However, this rule does not only have advantages, it comes along with its setbacks as well. One such being the disdain for female babies due to this rule. Measures such as abortion, infanticide, abandonment and even neglect have been reported to occur to the infants who are female. Such family planning law has brought about disparate ration of female and male infants.

Recently, a lot of changes have been introduced to this law, because of millions of sibling-less people and also to prevent too much decrease in the population. It is now reported that there is a special provision for couples without siblings, which is so because the law forbade their parents from having a second child. Now, these sibling-less couples can have two children instead of just a single child.

In order to make sure that the law is followed correctly, China has supplied its citizens with more education regarding alternative birth control methods other than abortion, IUDs and sterilization. The government also provided ample support to the citizens.

Zhang Weiqing, the Minister of the State Commission of Population and Family Planning stated that in the eleventh Five-Year Plan Period (2006-2010) the same one child policy will follow and is likely to continue indefinitely for the nation’s welfare through population growth.

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09
Jul

corruptionWhile providing meals or paying for the travel and accommodation costs seems like a normal affair to entertain one’s business partners, in China its not the same. Many foreign business operators think twice before offering any gifts concerning travel or entertainment in China because it is against the China law.

Corruption cases are on the rise in China. The Chinese authorities have investigated a lot of corruption cases and have come to a conclusion that the corruption cases which arises from involvement with foreign business firms and through international trade is strangely quite high. For the purpose of enlightening and making the people aware of this, the CPC Central Committee broadcasted their 2008-2012 Work Plans for Establishing and Improving the System of Corruption Punishment and Prevention on June 22, 2008. This focused on the investigation of such bribery cases which are concerned with mainly foreign business companies, etc that operate in the PRC.

According to Article 389 of the PRC Criminal Law, it is a crime for any individual in China to give money or property with the intention of getting an undue advantage. This money or property is usually given to a state functionary as a bribe.

Hence, the payment of traveling expenses or even the reimbursement of the same and providing meals is categorized under the broader concept of property interest. Property interest is anything that can be quantified with a monetary value. That is why the business operators, businessmen and their counterparts are careful not to violate any part of this law which can result in criminal liability. Even if these benefits like provision of meals or reimbursement of expenses are of very low value, it is a crime if the provider of these had an intention of gaining an undue advantage.

Not only that, the business operators or businessmen in China should also not engage in commercial bribery, which means giving property or money to another individual or a business unit for the purpose of purchase and sale of goods.

The penalty for such commercial bribery is quite heavy, ranging from anything from RMB 10,000 to RMB 200,000 f the individual is found to be guilty.

Even the civil servants are encompassed under this rule and they are prohibited by the  China law to obtain any personal gains or engaging in any activities for the purpose of profit by using their post. If found guilty, the penalty could be simply a warning or dismissal and sometimes it can be demotion. During the time period in which the punishment is meted out they would, by default, be ineligible for any increment in wage, promotion or other work related rewards.

The main purpose behind establishment of such law in china is to eradicate corruption and bribery as much as possible and also to promote fair competition.

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08
Jul

china lawOne of the main reasons for the success of the progression of China’s legal information system is due to the online legal databases. These databases on China law is created by various academic institutions of China and the government agencies, all under the LexisNexis and Westlaw template.

This idea originated in the 1980s, when the legal researches were contemplating about adopting a service that would supply comprehensive legal services online to all those who required it. In China, the online database services have features such as powerful searching capacities, omnibus help features and exhaustive coverage.

In the past, Chinalawinfo, in co-operation with LexisNexis and Westlaw supplied Chinese law databases in Chinese as well as English. This database constituted of local as well as national laws relating to foreign and economic business.

In the 1990s, other legal services similar to Chinalawinfo provided the same contents to the world .These are sinolaw.com, CEI and LawOnline, which is a production in Hong Kong.

The topic was s famous that even foreign publishers began to include Chinese law in their database. Various legal education institutions, law enforcement firms and agencies also established law database and provided services online.

The Internet has become a very useful platform for the development and publication of Chinese law and information on the same. However, there are certain problems that cannot be solved by the Internet alone. One such reason being the revisions and amendments of legal provisions for the purpose of ensuring the quality of control of law compilation. This is a highly confusing as well as problematic aspect of China’s law publication.

However, that is not the sole issue. Another crucial issue is adopting the modern legal publishing techniques and standards. The indexing system and the digest system should be included in legal publishing for better use. There should be adoption or creation of a unified citation system which would solve the problems of difficulties in accessing the information system in China. This citation system should be a search term as well as a one of a kind component for organizing information.

In other words, the current secondary sources and the finding tools are not well developed at the moment. It has to keep up with the current existing legal publishing structure. Hence, tools that would help make retrieval of information easier such as research tools and guides should be released regularly. One more life-saver here is the online search algorithms.

One should realize, however, that the internet technology does not create the database itself and hence the development of such database cannot solely be based on the Internet. The government is expected to maintain its policies regarding the information archival, distribution and retrieval. But why the government?  Because the Chinese government is the most prominent creator of legal information and also the supplier who is responsible for distributing the official releases of legal documents such as law, statistics, directories, etc.

The Internet is a boon as well as a bane, and hence the Chinese government must learn tp be discrete and secretive about the information access over the Internet.

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07
Jul

Chinese approachesYou may be surprised to know that the Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the word! Law in China in the recent times is a mix of western influences as well as traditional Chinese approaches.

The legal system is China is widely based on Confucian philosophy of controlling the society. This can be done through moral education. As we all know, from a very small age we are taught to differentiate the right actions from the wrong actions, in the same manner the Chinese legal system follows the same technique.

The Chinese legal system is an interesting topic to the people interested and in the past and even now, a greal deal of researchers is researching on the evaluation of portrayal of the Chinese legal system.

The People’s Republic of China follows a legal scheme which is the combination of Soviet model mixed with traditional Chinese culture. From an ideological point of view, the prevailing legal order in China is entirely new. After the Kuomingtang (KMT) government was abolished, the prevailing legal order in China came into existence. The KMT government was abolished due to the defeat of its leader in 1949 by the Communist Party.

While certain things have changed, however there are still traces of some traditional influences. This is evident from the ethical nature of the Chinese law, which is heavily based on the teachings of a famous philosopher, Confucius. This teaching is known as Confucianism and it dates back over thousands of years in the history of China. If one observes carefully, one shall find that Confucianism is a distinctive feature of the law of the PRC.

The legal framework in China at present was officially established in the year 1949. The framework is based on Leninism and Marxism. In 1978 the Chinese government adopted the policy known as the Open Door Policy to promote the country’s economic development. Before that, a series of disruptions that are political in nature had prevented the formation of the modern legal order and its progression.

The law in China is quite different from the ideals of the Western Society; ideals here imply justice, equity, etc. Socialism is the foundation of the Chinese law and it is regarded as the ultimate instrument for social order and control in the country.

Nowadays a whole lot of information regarding legal materials or china laws can be accessed through the Internet. People seeking for adequate information can find them in various sites, blogs, etc. However all these blogs and websites have one thing in common, there is no proper systematized information, means the usage of finding tools such as index and digest so that anyone can easily navigate their way into the desired case reports, law treatises, reviews on laws, laws and regulations in China in general, etc. That is because efforts are being made to formulate such information structure and it is currently in the early stages of the construction.

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06
Jul

china lawFirst things first, what is renewable energy? Renewable energy can be defined as the energy that is obtained from natural resources like the wind, rain, sunlight, tides, geothermal heat, etc. It is a much better alternative to non-renewable energy such as coal, fossil fuels, etc because of its ability to be naturally replenished. Also, it does not cause pollution and is in sync with Mother Nature. Things can’t get any better than that!

Now even the Chinese government realized the benefits of renewable energy and established a fresh law. According to this law, all the operators that work on power grids must purchase the electricity that is produced by the generators powered by renewable energy for a greener, cleaner China.

China is basically coal-dependent when it comes to energy, and this law is established with a view to raise the consumption of the renewable sources of energy in terms of proportions.

According to Xinhua news agency, the standing committee belonging to the National People’s Congress adopted the amendment to the 2006 law on renewable energy. This amendment authorizes the energy department of the State Council, the state power authority and the State Council finance department to evaluate the proportion of production of power by renewable energy to the capacity of generation of power on the whole during a particular time period.

China is not all alone in this scheme; several countries made requirements that the grid operators should give priority to production of renewable energy from the in spite of it being an expensive affair in comparison to the load plants that are coal-fire based.

Because of the Chinese government subsidies, a boom (unexpected huge growth) in the wind power plants resulted in a huge portion of loss of wind capacity because in some places, the placement or location of wind farms aren’t in the right direction for optimum harnessing of the wind energy. Another reason is that there is no proper connection to the grid sometimes.

According to Xinhua, a majority of the machines for harnessing wind power in China is not properly linked to the grid. And a majority of China’s wind power harnessing machines is set up in the regions that are wind-swept. Gansu and Inner Mongolia are some examples of these regions. The power demand in these regions is low. What’s more, some of the coal generators that are most reasonably priced can be found in some parts of Mongolia and hence these are preferred over wind energy sources, which are pushed out of the market.

Hence, China must come up with efficient solutions to solve this problem such as grids that are more flexible and smart. This would be a huge benefit in aspects more than one.

The target set by China is to make the percentage of renewable energy to reach at least 15% of the power generation in the country by the year 2020.

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