Baosheng Zhang

Abstract

Since 1978, Chinese evidence law has experienced significant changes and is now  entering a  rapid developmental stage  prompted by  the ongoing judicial reform. In general, current evidence law of China suffers from many issues ranging from absence of deep conceptulization, mistaken principles, overlap of contents, and lack of uniformity  in application. Although some representatives of  the  National People's Congress persist with proposals of  drafting  a  separate evidence code,coordinating  evidence  law  with the existing  three  major  procedural laws  in Chinaremains to be an extremely challenging and complicated task. In the short term, the most practical approach is for the Supreme People’s Court to enact a set of Provisions on Procedural  Evidence  of the People’s Court  by  cooperating all  current evidence rules scattered in the three  major  procedural  laws and producing  a  unified  set of judicial interpretations. This approach does not reinvent the wheel but only seeks to “upgrade the software.” It can achieve the goal of “integrating three sets of evidence rules” by systematically  compiling current evidence  rules, theoretical reconstruction to remedy  the  absence  of  conceptulization, eliminating  redundancy  through combining  identical  terms, and eradicating  mistaken  principles  through  a  thorough system rebuilding. However,  law  schools  in  China have  ignored evidence  law education for a long time, resulting in considerable difficulties in this effort, such as lack of  up-to-date knowledge  of, and adherence  to outdated concepts by,  the law makers. Therefore, strengthening  evidence  law  education  and cultivating  a  new generation of  talents equipped with  the  scientific  knowledge  of  evidence  law  is the key to further development of evidence law in China. 

Keywords: Evidence  Law; Developmental Stage; Problems  and Reconstruction; 

Integration of Three Sets of Evidence Rules; Evidence Law Education 

Network address：http://www.bu.edu/ilj/files/2015/03/Baosheng-Zhang-Reflecting-on-Develop...