This Week in Asian Law

January 2-8


China

  • 2020 was a “norm-breaking” year for the National People’s Congress (NPC), according to the NPC Observer, which summarized the year in review here. Another blog, the Beijing-based China Justice Observer, released a review of recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards by Chinese courts in 2019.

  • China’s first Civil Code took effect on January 1, 2021. The National People’s Congress has released an official English translation of the Code. The Supreme People’s Court “demoted” Guiding Cases No. 9 and No. 20, which became irrelevant after the Code’s passage. Immediately after the New Year holiday, several Chinese district courts applied provisions of the Code when rendering judgments (in Chinese).

    • A district court in Beijing ruled against a plaintiff in a case involving the “voluntary assumption of risk rule” in a badminton game. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant failed to exercise due care when returning the shuttlecock during a game. The Chaoyang District People's Court dismissed all the plaintiff's claims per Article 1176 of the Civil Code, which addresses the voluntary assumption of risk in recreational and sports activities. 

    • The first case applying the Civil Code to annul a marriage based on the failure of one partner to inform the other of his HIV-positive condition was adjudicated by a district court in Shanghai. Article 1053 of the Code provides that “where one of the parities suffers from a serious illness, he or she shall truthfully inform the other party before marriage registration. In the case of failure to do so, the other party may make a request to the people's court for annulment of marriage.” Under the pre-Civil Code Marriage Law, which was in force at the time of marriage, one partner’s HIV-positive status was not grounds for nullification. However, the Shanghai court noted that the marriage was ongoing, and said it applied the Civil Code rule per Article 2 of the Supreme People’s Court interpretation of the Civil Code concerning its retroactive effect (in Chinese)

    • The first case involving harm caused by an object thrown from within a building was decided by a court in Guangzhou. This case involved a 69-year old female plaintiff who was injured when a child threw a bottle of water from the 35th floor of a building. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, applying Article 1254 of the Civil Code, which provides: “Where any object thrown out of a building or falling down from a building causes any harm to another person, the tortfeasor shall assume tort liability according to the law.” (in Chinese)

    • The first environmental pollution case in which punitive damages were imposed under the Civil Code was decided by a court in Jiangxi Province. The case was filed by the county-level prosecutor’s office as a public interest case. The defendant company was held liable for its employee’s act of discharging of sodium sulfate effluent into a well and mountain soils. It was ordered to pay RMB 171,406 ($26,459) in punitive damages per Article 1232 of the Civil Code, which provides: “Where a tortfeasor violates legal provisions and intentionally causes environmental pollution or ecological damage, resulting in serious consequences, the victim shall have the right to claim corresponding punitive compensation.”

    • The first case involving passengers killed in an auto accident after accepting a free ride was heard by a Nanjing district court. The judge retroactively applied Article 1217 of the Civil Code to lower the amount of damages and the parties reached a settlement accordingly. The driver of the car had offered a free ride to two colleagues, and all three were killed in an accident. Relatives of one of the passengers brought a suit against the driver’s family, demanding RMB 1.1 million in damages. The court applied the “free ride rule” in Article 1217 of the Civil Code to find mitigated liability of the defendant, and applied the rule retroactively according to Article 18 of Supreme People’s Court’s interpretation of the Civil Code.

    • On the first working day after the Civil Code took effect, a district court in Xuzhou decided three cases applying provisions of the Code. The first involved whether the nephew of a person killed in a car accident has standing to bring a claim against the deceased driver and insurance company. The court applied Article 1128 of the Code to confirm the plaintiff’s standing. The second case involved Article 1079 of the Code which provides: “Where spouses have been living separate and apart for a year after the people's court has ruled that a divorce is not granted, a divorce shall be granted if either spouse files a divorce action again." In the third case involving standard terms printed on the back of a consignment note, the court applied Article 496 of the Code and found the standard terms invalid if the “party furnishing the standard terms fails to carry out its obligation to remind or explain, resulting in the other party failing to note or understand the terms in which it has a material interest.”

  • The Supreme People’s Court held a press conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the enactment of the PRC State Compensation Law and released 25 influential state compensation cases. The court selected 25 high-profile state compensation cases that are considered milestones in the area of human rights protection and regulation of state power, including nine wrongful conviction cases, three wrongful arrest cases, three wrongful seizure cases, one wrongful release of seizure case, two wrongful recovery of property cases, one wrongful police detention case, two uses of deadly force, one torture case, two cases involving death in a correctional facility, and two involving wrongful execution of a court judgment. Cases deemed “influential” are not binding and can be seen as having less effect than designed “guiding cases,” but courts often refer to them in practice.

  • The former chairman of Huarong Asset Management, Lai Xiaomin, was sentenced to death for bribery, corruption, and bigamy. The sentence was an exception to the recent trend in China of rarely applying the death penalty to economic crimes. Lai was convicted of accepting $277 million in bribes over the course of a decade, an astonishingly high number in Chinese history. Lai is among the highest-profile figures to be convicted since President Xi Jinping began a campaign against corruption. The sentence is believed to have sent a message of Xi’s determination to continue the anti-corruption campaign. The Chinese Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission firmly supported Lai’s conviction and sentence and emphasized the deterrence effect of the verdict.

  • NBA legend Michael Jordan finally won his intellectual property case against a Chinese company, Qiaodan Sports, which misappropriated his Chinese name and wrongly implied that Jordan was somehow connected to the company. After a retrial, the Supreme People’s Court overturned the decision of a lower court to rule in favor of Jordan and order Qiaodan Sports to cancel the Qiaodan trademark. The court did not order the respondent to disgorge profits from its unauthorized use or stop using the Jumpman-like logo.

  • The 11th Amendment to PRC Criminal Law, with provisions addressing food and drug safety, financial crimes, crimes involving throwing objects from heights, and protection of intellectual property, was passed by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on December 26, 2020, and takes effect on March 1, 2021. Check here for analyses by legal scholars on the significance and impact of the amendments. (in Chinese)

  • The Chinese Communist Party passed the revised Regulation on Protection of the Rights of Party Members, which took effect on December 25, 2020. The new regulation amplifies provisions in a 2004 party regulation regarding the rights, obligations, and responsibilities of party members and party organizations. A line-by-line comparison of the 2020 and 2004 regulation can be found here. (in Chinese)

  • A one-year license suspension imposed on well-known defense lawyer Zhou Ze after he posted video online showing police torture of his client has sparked outrage among the legal community in China and abroad. (in Chinese) The Chaoyang Justice Bureau which handed down the sanction cited Article 9 of the Lawyers Law and Article 38 of the Ministry of Justice “Measures on the Administration of Lawyers’ Practice” in holding that Zhou acted improperly by disclosing or distributing important information related to a case. Professor He Haibo of Tsinghua University Law School attended Zhou’s hearing and subsequently wrote a letter to the bureau rebutting its analysis and defending Zhou.

  • In a sexual assault case that emerged at the height of China’s #MeToo movement, a court ruled that former journalists He Qian and Zou Sicong defamed a third prominent journalist, Deng Fei, when they accused him online of sexual assault. One of the defendants, Zou, posted the first-instance judgment online and expressed frustration with the court’s application of the burden of proof (in Chinese). The lawsuit stemmed from an article written by He that Zou published online in 2018, in which He alleged that Deng lured her to a hotel room in 2009 to discuss story ideas, then removed her clothes and tried to kiss and grope her. Deng brought a civil defamation suit against his accusers. In its judgment, the court ruled that the evidence provided by Zou and He was “not enough to allow someone to firmly believe without any hesitation that what was described truly happened.”

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Taiwan

Vietnam

  • Vietnam’s revised Labour Code took effect on January 1, 2021 and was praised for improving the rights protection of workers and employers by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The law expands protections for 55 million workers without employment contracts, strengthens protections against workplace gender discrimination and sexual harassment, increases the retirement age, relaxes the requirement for salary registration, affords workers more autonomy in forming unions, and streamlines labor dispute resolution. ILO’s chief of the Freedom of Association Branch urged Vietnam to also adopt collective bargaining, put in place anti-retaliation mechanisms, and ensure compliance.

  • Three Vietnamese pro-democracy journalists were sentenced to more than a decade in prison for criticizing the government as a part of crackdown on dissent by the ruling communist party. The Ministry of Public Security said at the one-day trial that the journalists were “making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the state.” They are among approximately 170 prisoners of conscience currently held in Vietnam, according to Amnesty International.

  • A summary of Vietnam’s “top 10” laws and decrees of 2020 can be found here.