Beyond the Border: Chinese Legal Information in Cyberspace

Extract

In a broad sense, “China law” ought to be comprised of four components: (1) the laws of the People's Republic of China (PRC); (2) the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), a former British colony handed back to the PRC in 1997, which still employs the common law system; (3) the laws of the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR), a former Portuguese colony which was returned to China in 1999, but has kept the original legal system; and (4) the laws of Taiwan which, as the remaining part of the former Republic of China, has developed a distinct legal system different from that of the mainland after the Nationalists lost the civil war to the Communists in 1949. However, “China law” is commonly referred as the laws of the PRC, which was constituted in 1949 when the new government was founded. This article will mainly review the legal resources of the laws of the PRC in electronic formats, including databases, websites, CD-ROM products, and other non-print materials, but not traditional print resources. The legal resources of the laws of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan will be discussed in future articles.