Remedies for criminal injustice in China

The revisions of Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC (2012 CPL) are designed to advocate ‘respecting and protecting human rights’ as a legal principle of criminal procedures in China’s practice. In promoting the new revisions, Case SHE Xianglin and Case ZHAO Zuohai have been milestones of Chinese reforms on its criminal justice.1 Ironically, external bodies issued China’s human rights reports,2 including its extensive use of extralegal detention, widespread practice of torture and other flawed justice in practice. The actual implementation of new reforms has been watched by various human rights groups3 in order to fill in the gap between legal requirements and poor implementation. It is necessary for China to learn lessons from the past experience and explore whether it is possible or not to establish a new mechanism for adequate remedies of repeated criminal injustices and if so, how to make it on the ground.