December 4-10
China
Chinese authorities announced another wave of loosening of COVID restrictions in the “New 10-Point Measures” issued by the National Health Commission, following on “20 Measures” that were rolled out less than a month ago.
The People’s Supreme Court (SPC) released ten typical cases focused on protecting the rights and interests of heroes and martyrs, including protecting their personality rights, providing preferential treatment to them and their families, protecting memorial facilities, and promoting patriotism. Under Chinese law, personality rights are not extinguished by death.
The SPC issued Opinions on Regulating and Strengthening the Judicial Application of Artificial Intelligence. The document sets the goal of establishing a relatively comprehensive judicial AI technology application system by 2025 in order to alleviate judges’ workloads, guard against corruption, and enhance court management. The full text is available here in both Chinese and English.
The EU advanced two legal claims against China at the World Trade Organization, one over China’s rejection of imports from Lithuania and the other over China’s use of anti-suit injunctions that barred EU owners of high-tech patents from turning to EU courts to protect their intellectual property. The EU Commission estimates that China’s imports from Lithuania dropped by 80% this year after the Baltic nation strengthened ties with Taiwan.
The SPC released for public comment the draft of a new judicial interpretation about civil litigation against monopolies. He Zhonglin, first deputy chief judge of the court's Intellectual Property Court, said Chinese courts should focus more on claims involving major industries such as the digital economy, core technologies, and medical communications.
Hong Kong
A judge sentenced former Apple Daily owner Jimmy Lai to five years, nine months in prison for violating the terms of a lease contract. Lai was convicted of fraud for allowing his consulting firm to use space in an office building leased by his newspaper company. He has already been sentenced to 13 months for participating in a vigil to commemorate 1989 Tiananmen protest victims, and is awaiting trial on charges of violating the National Security Law.
Hong Kong began enforcing a little-publicized “updated removal policy” under which persons who flee to Hong Kong seeking asylum but are rejected by the review process will face immediate repatriation if a court refuses to review their claim or reviews and rejects their claim. Officials allege that some claimants have abused legal procedures to prolong their stay in Hong Kong. Lawyers for migrants note that some of those repatriated under the new policy might still have active legal claims. Hong Kong does not take in refugees but screens them for resettlement in other countries.
A Hong Kong court refused to grant bail to pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan pending his trial under the National Security Law. A judge said Lee might continue to endanger national security if released. Lee, a former legislator, was chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organized annual vigils commemorating victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
Hong Kong officials and legislators urged Google to remove links to a protest song from its top search results and instead display the official Chinese national anthem. At two recent international sporting events, a rugby competition in South Korea and a power-lifting competition in Dubai, the 2019 protest song Glory to Hong Kong was played when the Hong Kong team’s national anthem - which is the anthem of the People’s Republic of China - should have been played.
Hong Kong authorities are seeking to “decolonize” city ordinances by removing references to the queen and other relics of British rule. Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok told a Legislative Council panel meeting that 76 pieces of legislation still need to be adapted. Calls for change were reignited following the death of Queen Elizabeth in September. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The Legislative Council approved amendments to the Copyright Law that extend copyright protection to work distributed via any electronic means, with exemptions for the purposes of “parody, satire, caricature or pastiche” as well as “criticism, review, quotation, and reporting and commenting on current events.” Proponents said Hong Kong’s copyright regime was behind the times, while the sole non-establishment lawmaker expressed concern that the revised law would have a chilling effect.
The Court of Appeal upheld a district court decision in Breton Jean v 香港丽翔公务航空有限公司 (HK Bellawings Jet Limited) which held that days when an employee is required to be on standby cannot be regarded as a “rest day” or “day off.”
Japan
The Diet approved legislation banning use of high-pressure tactics to solicit large donations, including “spiritual sales” in which people are pressured into buying items for exorbitant prices. The law is directed chiefly at the Unification Church. The man accused of assassinating former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was angered by close ties between the church and the ruling party.
Japan's Supreme Court will consider whether a legal provision requiring people to undergo sex change surgery before they can legally change their gender is constitutional. The 15-member Grand Bench of the Court will hear a case filed by a transgender woman who claims that requiring transgender persons to undergo surgery and become infertile is a grave human rights violation and unconstitutional. The court upheld the constitutionality of the same provision in 2019.
The Osaka District Court sentenced a man to three years in prison, suspended for five years, for illegally entering and damaging a building belonging to a Korean international school. Prosecutors said the act was a hate crime, but the judge declined to use that term and made no reference to discrimination. After a similar outcome in a case earlier this year in Kyoto District Court, experts have called for legislation to address hate crimes or crimes motivated by bias.
The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the Okinawa Prefecture Government to halt landfill work that is part of a project to relocate a key US base inside the prefecture. Residents in Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of the US military’s facilities in Japan, oppose the base and its relocation, complaining about accidents, crime, noise, and environmental degradation linked to the US presence.
Koreas
South Korean lawmakers voted to establish a single legal means for calculating a person’s age: adding one year on each birthday. Koreans have used three methods, the most common of which starts by counting a person as 1 on the day they are born and adding a year on each New Year’s Day. A person born on Dec. 31 would thus become 2 years old within 24 hours. Under the revised law, that baby would have to wait 365 days to turn 1. Critics said the co-existence of multiple ways of counting age caused confusing in providing welfare, medical, and administrative services.
A district court judge has reportedly rejected prosecutors’ request for arrest warrants for Shin Hyun-seong, co-founder of the crypto firm Terraform Labs, as well as for three Terra investors and four developers. The judge said there was little risk of Shin or his associates destroying evidence related to the case. The firm and several of its employees have been under investigation since the collapse of stablecoin TerraUSD and LUNA tokens in May 2020.
Members of South Korea’s ruling conservative party proposed a bill that would make it harder for foreign permanent residents to vote in local elections. Under current law, foreign nationals with at least three years of permanent residency are eligible to vote for mayors, governors, and local council members. Chinese nationals accounted for nearly 100,000 of the 127,600 foreigners with voting rights as of March 2022. The proposed bill increases the residency requirement to five years and limits voting rights to foreigners from countries that also allow South Korean permanent residents to vote in their elections.
Taiwan
The Judicial Yuan said up to 35,000 Taiwanese citizens will receive juror questionnaires as Taiwan prepares to implement a Citizen Judges Act on January 1, 2023. Under the law, eligible citizens ages 23 or older will share the bench with professional judges in some cases. They can claim paid work leave from their employers on the days they attend court. The US-Asia Law Institute has published a series of essays about the reform (see Part I & Part II here).
The National Human Rights Commission held a forum on migrant workers human rights to mark Human Rights Day on Dec. 10. Commission Chair Chen Chu (陳菊) said Taiwan has an important role in global supply chains and businesses will be more competitive if they better protect migrant workers. Taiwan was named in the US Department of Labor’s biennial List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor in 2020 and 2022 due to poor treatment of Indonesian and Philippine fishermen engaged in deep-sea fishing.
The legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee passed a draft amendment to the People With Disabilities Rights Protection Act (身心障礙者權益保障法), directing that priority seats on public transportation be given to people based on actual need rather than based on their status as elderly, female, or children.