7 - Live Witness Testimony in the Chinese Criminal Courts

Summary

The chapter provides an overview of the legal history of live witness testimony in China, tracing the role of witnesses in the criminal courts from the late 1970s until the present day, while also introducing the current legislation on witnesses and testimony and discussing in detail the reforms within the 2012 Criminal Procedure Law encouraging witnesses to take the stand. It then explores the reasons for the failure of all live witness testimony-oriented reforms to date, with the author sharing her empirical findings from a pilot project and analysing the reasons for the low rate of witness attendance in practice. She also makes the key argument that the success of witness reform in China ultimately depends on the introduction of cross-examination rules. The chapter then puts forward a number of proposals for further witness reform in China, including the short-term goal of making the current reforms more effective and the long-term goal of adopting hearsay.