Civil justice in China: An empirical study of courts in three provinces

This article offers a comparative study of legal reforms in different provinces in China. China is an enormous country, and it is often easy to generalize about the status of its legal system without taking account of the economic and social variations between provinces. A case brought in Beijing may not be litigated in the same way as a case brought over a thousand miles away in Guangzhou. This study collected data from 386 case files from the intermediate courts of Hubei, Guizhou, and Guangdong. It is one of the first systematic examinations of civil litigation and court procedures in China. Lessons drawn from this study are significant not only to Chinese legal reforms but also to comparative studies and reforms in other nations.