Regulation of the Legal Profession in China: A Historical Overview

Abstract

Abstract Understanding a legal system requires understanding of its legal service providers. The Chinese legal system has undergone major transformations since the late nineteenth century, and a series of approaches to regulating China’s lawyers has accompanied those transformations. This article offers a historical overview of those approaches, discussing the regulation of the Chinese legal profession and the foreign lawyers operating in the Chinese environment. The Chinese legal profession has never achieved significant self-regulation or autonomy from the state, and, during the Mao era (1949–1976) it was nearly obliterated. In the late 1970s, China began to rehabilitate its legal profession and create a space in which foreign law firms can operate legally. To a remarkable degree, that effort succeeded: Chinese law firms now operate around the world, and many major international firms operate successfully in China. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were signs that China’s leaders were willing to allow the legal system more autonomy and that part of that would comprise liberalizing the regulation of the legal profession. Instead, under Xi Jinping (China’s leader since 2012), political control over the Chinese legal profession has tightened, and foreign firms face new regulations that make it increasingly difficult for them to operate successfully. Going forward, Chinese firms might be supported to the extent they further the Xi regime’s economic aspirations, but they will be subject to closer oversight by the Chinese Communist Party. Foreign firms are no longer considered necessary for China’s economic rise, and they will be able to remain in China only if they are willing to abide by significant new restrictions.