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9 Police Stud.: Int'l Rev. Police Dev. 151 (1986)
An Introduction to Shanghai's Legal System

handle is hein.journals/polic9 and id is 161 raw text is: An Introduction To Shanghai's Legal System Shi Huanzhang, East China Institute of Politics and Law, People's Republic of China Abstract The open door policy of the People's Republic of China invites foreign trade and in- vestment. This policy has demanded changes in the legal system. This article introduces the relevant laws and legal institutions in the city of Shanghai. Shanghai is the biggest economic centre in China. We welcome all foreign entrepreneurs to come and make investments. Such investment and cooperation will inevitably involve the pro- tection of law. This paper serves as a brief in- troduction to the Shanghai legal system. First of all, as far as legislation is concerned, a large number of statutes have been promul- gated in our country since the adoption of the economic open-door policy. Shanghai has already promulgated and will continue promul- gating many local statutes and decrees cover- ing such fields as municipal construction, economic development and cultural interflow. Secondly, as for its judiciary, Shanghai is a municipality directly under the central authority, with subordinate twelve districts and ten counties. Every district or county has a basic people's court and procuratorate under the authority of the intermediate people's court and procuratorate. Above the inter- mediate people's court and procuratorate are the Shanghai High People's Court and Shanghai People's Procuratorate. Every court has a criminal chamber, a civil chamber and an economic law chamber. Every procuratorate has a criminal investigation section, an economic investigation section and several other sections. With the rapid development of Shanghai's economic construction, the admin- istration of economic cases is playing a more and more important part in the work of the court and procuratorate. In Shanghai, the Shanghai Intermediate People's Court has jurisdiction as court of first instance over cases concerning foreign affairs and foreign na- tionals. In handling such cases, the people's court follows the principles of taking facts as the basis and law as criterion, paying re- spect to international practice and safe- guarding lawful rights and interests of parties concerned. In the new situation the Shanghai judicial administration is trying to offer more legal ser- vice to aid in economic construction and peo- ple's lives. At present there are thirty-eight law firms and lawyer's offices with about 1,000 professional, part-time and specially- accredited lawyers all together. Shanghai International Economic & Trade Law Firm, Shanghai Lawyer's Office for Patent Affairs, 'Shanghai Lawyer's Office for Foreign Economic Affairs, Shanghai Lawyer's Office for Maritime Affairs and Shanghai Lawyer's Office for Overseas Chinese have accumulated a wealth of experience in handling legal prob- lems concerning foreign affairs and foreign na- tionals. Shanghai No.4 Law Firm is mainly composed of jurists and scholars of the East China Institute of Politics and Law who offer society extensive legal services combined with teaching and fairly deep research into all kinds of legal problems. Besides handling cases, lawyers in Shanghai also act as legal con- sultants to state organs, enterprises and public organizations. In recent years, law firms and lawyer's offices in Shanghai have offered ex- tensive legal services to their client units. It is estimated that until the end of last June, all law firms and lawyer's offices handled over 7,600 economic law affairs of various kinds, participated into over 1,000 domestic and international business negotiations, served as agents in over 940 economic conflicts, settled by consolidation over 1,400 economic conflicts and offered over 22,400 legal services. The above statistics show that lawyers have ex-

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