To improve the effectiveness of civil judgment enforcement in China[2] has raised serious concerns widely among legal scholars, judicial personnel and common citizens for many years. Great efforts from judicial community and governments have been made to resolve the enforcement problem. This article will firstly examine the current civil judgment enforcement system by covering key issues on organizational system, attachment of bank accounts, transparency of debtor's assets, debtor protection, data protection and international cooperation. Then the enforcement system will be evaluated by providing comments on problem of organizational system of enforcement, efficiency of enforcement in general, debtor protection, and deficiencies of national law hindering efficiency of cross-border enforcement.
A brief introduction of Chinese legal system in general seems necessary in order to understand the system of civil judgment enforcement in China. The legal system of China generally belongs to the civil law system, which has similarities to the German and French systems; and it is mainly codified law. China does not have a formal system of judicial precedent, even though the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) are authorized to issue binding interpretations of laws. The Constitution is the principal law and the highest lawmaking authority is the National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature; the NPC also has power to interpret statues.[3] The State Council, China's cabinet, and its subordinate ministries and administrative departments, are empowered to issue administrative regulations and measures and adopt regulations required for the implementation of laws passed by the NPC.[4] The People's Congress and the People's Government at local levels also have legislative authority; however, local regulations shall not conflict with national legislation.[5] The NPC and the State of Council play an important role in resolving conflicts between different levels of law.[6]
Courts are the only authority to have power to enforce civil judgments in China. Thus, the understanding towards the system of courts in China is also significant. Under the Constitution, the courts are the judicial organs of the state and the courts have independent judicial power.[7] The judicial organ of the state is established by the NPC to which it is responsible and by which it is supervised. The courts are generally divided into courts of general jurisdiction and courts of special jurisdiction. Judicial power is implemented by the courts at four levels, which respectively refer to the basic courts, intermediate courts, higher courts, and the Supreme Court.[8] The first three are at the local and provincial levels and the SPC is at the national level.
The basic courts are established at the level of county and district.[9] Each basic court mainly has three Trial Tribunals - criminal, civil, and economic.[10] Intermediate courts and higher courts are created at the level of province or autonomous regions, or municipalities straightly under the central government or under the jurisdiction of a province or autonomous region.[11] Their internal divisions are the same as the basic courts. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial organ and it is at the highest level of the hierarchies of the court system in China. All levels of courts including the Supreme Court are responsible to the People's Congress and its Standing Committee at the same level. The special courts are Military courts, Maritime courts, Railway Transportation courts, and Forest Affairs courts.
The SPC is authorized to supervise the administration of justice conducted by the lower Courts.[12] The power of issuing interpretations on questions concerning specific application of laws and decrees arising in judicial proceedings is also given to the SPC.[13] These interpretations are usually binding on the lower courts in judicial practice.
Courts can set up their execution department according to their needs. Enforcement officials working in execution department of courts implement execution of civil judgments. China follows the principle of two instances of trials for final adjudication, which are fist instance and on appeal.[14] However, it is the first instance of trial court that is responsible for execution of civil judgments.
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Generally speaking, at present there is no standard database in courts in China. The general procedure of execution of civil judgments is that firstly, judgment creditor applies for execution to a court; after execution department in the court accepts the judgment creditor's application, the execution department will file the execution case according to its own filing system; then they will allocate specific enforcement officials to take care of the accepted execution case.
However, the Information Enquiry System of Person subjected to Enforcement[15] established by the SPC started to open to the public on 30 March 2009. The system is available to anyone who wants to query information of a person subjected to civil judgment enforcement in China from 2007 till now. But it is the local courts that provide such information and are responsible to certify the accuracy of data. By inputting a person or an organization's name or ID number, one can find out the following information of a case subject to enforcement: the person or organization's name and ID number, execution court, case filing time, case filing number, amount of money subject to execution and situation of execution.
This national court case information enquiry and management system is one part of national deterrent enforcement mechanisms. The national deterrent enforcement mechanism will gradually constrain activities of debtor's legal, economic and normal life, through this system and through the connection of such system with financial, industrial and commercial registration, real estate, transportation, immigration and other departments as well as other social credit systems in the social networks. Furthermore, the law now allows courts either by themselves, or under application of creditors to release the information of debtors' non-compliance with obligations under the court judgments through the media of newspapers, radio, television, Internet and so forth.[16] It is hoped that debtors will be urged to voluntarily perform their obligations due to the fear of such constraints in their lives. At present, such deterrent enforcement mechanism is still under the process of establishment.
The application of attachment of bank accounts follows the rules of application of property preservation order under the Civil Procedural law of PRC (CPL)[17]. Article 92 - 96 of CPL provide the rules of property preservation. According to article 94, property preservation shall be effected by sealing up, distraining, freezing, or other methods as prescribed by law.
The applicant of such order normally is the judgment creditor, or his/her representative. Article 92 provides that the court may issue such order without party's application when necessary; however, it is very rare in practice. The applicant (the creditor) also bears the cost of application of such court order.[18] In order to apply for attachment order of bank accounts, the creditor is required to provide specific bank which the judgment debtor opens an account and the debtor's bank account number. Otherwise, the application will be refused by the court.
The creditor can apply such order before the initiation of proceedings on the merits, coinciding with the opening of proceedings on the merits, at any time during the proceedings on the merits, or after court judgment is issued. Article 92 concerns the application during proceedings; in order to obtain such order, a judgment creditor is required to demonstrate to the court that if the property preservation is not granted, execution of the judgment most probably becomes impossible or difficult because of the acts of the judgment debtor or for other reasons.[19] Article 93 concerns the application before proceedings; the applicant shall demonstrate to the court that the circumstances are urgent and without such order the applicant would suffer irreparable damages. However, applying for property preservation order either before or during the proceedings, the applicant shall provide a security; otherwise, the application shall be rejected. After obtaining a court judgment and before applying execution, the creditor can also apply for property preservation order.[20] Such order which has been granted before or during the proceedings of the case shall automatically become the methods of sealing up, distraining or freezing in the process of execution.[21]
Therefore, it is easy to see that the attachment of bank accounts can be served either as to secure the enforcement of judgment or to satisfy the creditor's claim, or can function as measures in the execution of a final judgment. Concerning the sum which can be exempt from the attachment order, it depends on the lowest living standards in the local place. This is generally subject to the court's discretion.
The attachment of bank accounts shall be executed immediately based on the order of property preservation from the court. After the court has frozen the property, it shall promptly notify the person whose property has been frozen.[22] The court will issue a notice of assisting execution to the bank, together with the order of the property preservation.[23] Therefore, the bank has the responsibility to assist execution of such court order. Generally when the bank staffs receive the court order, they will first check whether the debtor has enough balance in the current account. If
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the balance is enough, bank will transfer the required amount to the bank account of the execution department of the court. If the balance is not enough, the bank will transfer the incoming funds in the account so as to satisfy the court's execution order. According to article 103 of CPL, if the bank does not fulfill such assisting obligation, the court may impose a fine on the bank. However, in practice, the implementation of this rule is very difficult because most banks are state-owned in China.
Regarding the rank of execution in case of multiple creditors have claims to the same debtor, if such different monetary claims are decided by different court judgments and if the multiple creditors do not have security interest upon the same subject matter of the execution, then the rank order will depend on the time the court commences to take executory measures. If such different monetary claims are decided by one court judgment, debtor's property is insufficient to pay all the debts, and the multiple creditors do not have security interest upon the same subject matter of the execution, then the claims will be paid according to the proportion of the claims.[24]
If the debtor is not satisfied with the property preservation order, the debtor can apply to the same court for reconsideration once; however, implementation of such order shall not be suspended during the period of reconsideration.[25] After examining the application, the court shall reject debtor's application if it considers the property preservation order is correct; the court shall issue a new order to change or withdraw the previous order if it thinks the previous one is incorrect. Therefore, the debtor can apply for reconsideration if the debtor is not satisfied based on article 99 of CPL. However, in practice, the debtor shall apply reconsideration with valid legal reasons; otherwise, it will be rejected. The debtor can argue that that property preservation does not fall within the scope of the claim or the property is not relevant to the case based on the provision of article 94.
In China, there is no official information system to search a debtor's assets. However, the system of land registration, real estate registration, and vehicles registration make debtor's assets to some extent transparent.
However, according to article 10 of the Constitution, the lands in the cities belong to the state; the lands in rural and suburban areas, except those belonging to the state by law, belong to the collective community. Therefore individual citizens do not have the ownership over lands, but organizations and individuals may have right to reasonably use state-owned land by paying certain fee according to law.
Article 10 of the Property Law[26] provides that real estate registration shall be conducted by the real estate registration office where real estate locates. The individuals enjoy the property rights of ownership over their own real estate, including the rights of possessing, using, benefiting, and disposing their own housing. However, such property rights of ownership do not mean the idea of permanently own the real estate. Currently, the commercial residential housings normally have 70 years' life, and this is only a 70-year property "rental period" for individual owners. Article 149 of Property Law provides that when the using right of housing land expires, it renews automatically. However, according to the current laws, land users shall apply for renewal one year before the expiry, and may continue to use the land after paying the land transferring fee. The underlying real estate subject to enforcement can include housing, land and its attachments. The enforcement measures over real estate under article 226 of CPL mainly refer to forcing previous owners to move out of housing and land.
As for information from governmental organizations' records, according to some laws, one has the right to access. However, the general problem in practice is that such records are very difficult to get, especially in undeveloped areas. There are laws concerning the registration of house and real estate, land and so forth. Land registration bureau usually would refuse enquiries from individuals. Currently only House and Real Estate Bureau and Administration for Industry and Commerce are open to the public about enquiries by paying a certain fee. Vehicle registration bureau is managed by the Public Security Bureau, and the possibility of getting information is relatively higher than from other public bureaus. Other public bureaus generally follow the principle of refusal to enquiries from the public.
With regards to information of debtors' address, if the debtor is a legal person, the creditor may obtain the debtor's address from the Administration for Industry and Commerce by paying enquiring fee. However, if the debtor company's address is changed, the court normally will require the creditor to find out the changed address. Public Security Bureau, which can be considered as population registry in China, is responsible for the administration of ID card of residents and ensures the confidentiality of citizen's personal information. If the debtor is a natural person, there is no national regulation concerning whether one can obtain the debtor's address from this institution. However, in practice, lawyers may attempt to enquire such information from the bureau with a cover letter from their law firms. Unfortunately, such enquiry will
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be refused most of time; and there is no legal remedy for such situation.
Concerning some claims in special areas, such as maintenance, there is no broader permission to collect data in China. Such claims will be treated in the same way as other claims. However, the creditors can apply to the court for preliminary execution order in respect of such cases.[27]
Essentially, it is the creditors who collect the information of debtor's assets. After the creditors' application of execution being accepted by the court, the enforcement officials may help the creditors to collect such information.
Generally speaking, the imperfect enquiry system of public records limits the data collection about debtors' assets. A lot of relevant information cannot be obtained by creditors through normal channels. Some regulations may provide the right of such enquiry; unfortunately such rules are not operable in practice, and there are no legal remedies if the enquiry rights of creditors are violated.
If debtors hide, transfer, sell, damage the property which has been sealed up, distrained, or transfer the property which has been frozen, the court may impose fine or detain the debtor; if such action constitutes a crime, criminal liability of the debtor shall be pursued according to law.[28] In criminal law[29], article 313 regulates the crime of refusing to execute judgments or orders of the Courts. According to this article, the condition of constituting this crime is that the person is able to perform the specified obligations in the judgment but refuse to do so.
The debtors who do not fulfil the obligation in court judgment, shall report their properties that they have currently and one year prior to the date of receiving the execution notice; if the debtors refuse to report or report falsely, the court can determine to impose fine or detain the debtor.[30] The court deciding to require the debtor to report their properties, shall issue a property reporting order, in which shall include the scope of the property, period, legal consequence of refusing report or false report and so forth.[31] Concerning the debtor's assets information in the debtor's report, if the creditor requires checking, the court shall allow such information to be accessed; the creditor shall keep such information confidential.[32]
Concerning the situation over liquidation of common assets of partnership enterprises' assets during enforcement, after payment of liquidating expenses, wages and labor insurance expenses owed to workers, statutory compensation, taxes[33], the remaining partnership enterprise property shall be conducted according to partnership agreement; where the partnership agreement fails to specify or does not specify clearly, partners shall consult among each other; if the partners fail to reach any agreement, the ratio of capital contribution shall take effect; if the ratio of capital contribution cannot be determined, the partners shall share equally.[34]
As for the question on joint bank accounts, it is still uncommon for one in China to have a joint bank account. Concerning the property which a debtor co-owns with others, court can seal up, distrain, or freeze it, and then notify the co-owner promptly. If approved by the creditor, the co-owner may have an agreement with the debtor about the division of the co-owned property; the court will determine the validity of such agreement. After the court confirms the validity of agreement on the co-owned property, the effect of the sealing up, distraining, or freezing imposes merely on the portion of property that the debtor has after the partition of the property. The court shall cancel the court order concerning the portion of the property that the co-owner has. If the co-owner or the creditor brings litigation for partition of property, the court shall allow such litigation. During the proceedings, the execution of the co-owned property shall be suspended.[35]
The State Administration for Industry & Commerce (SAIC) of China is the competent authority of ministerial level directly under the State Council in charge of market supervision and related law enforcement through administrative means. It issues regulations in the fields of enterprise registration. One of its departments is Enterprise Registration Bureau, who drafts measures and practice directions regarding enterprise registration, coordinates and guides enterprise registration nationwide, takes care of registration of certain enterprises and supervises the registrants' registration practices, organizes and guides credit rating of business, establishes and maintains the national database of enterprise registration information, and analyzes and publishes registration information of domestic enterprises. There is also a separate Bureau for Registration of Foreign-Invested Enterprises, which has its own official site, including related rules and regulations concerning establishment, modification or cancellation of registration, what documents are required and so forth. There is also governmental Administration for Industry & Commerce at local levels - provinces, cities, and counties.
Generally, nowadays one can find relevant documents required in order to register a company from
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website or through the Bureau. Therefore, the transparency of company registrations has been improved to some extent. In terms of company registration applications by electronic systems, the regulations make this method available by specifying that the applicant may submit its application through letter, telegraph, data exchange and email etc.[36] However, in practice, electronic systems in terms of company registration application are still under construction and are not operable yet.
Firstly, a summary of the general principles of debtor protection during enforcement is provided below. The general principles are reflected in several provisions.
If a debtor does not fulfill the obligations, the court has the power to deduct, withhold part of the debtor's income to fulfill its obligations, but shall retain necessary living cost for the debtor and the family members that the debtor subsists; the court shall issue an order and a notice on assisting the execution, the debtor's company, bank and so forth shall assist.[37] Similarly, if the debtor does not fulfil the obligations, the court has the power to seal up, distrain, freeze, auction, and sell off debtor's property which is able to fulfil its obligations, but shall retain life necessity for the debtor and the debtor's family. However, the value of the property being sealed up, or distrained shall be equal to the default value that the debtor shall fulfil.[38] Regarding the life's necessities - housing which the debtor and the debtor's family are living, the court can seal up, but cannot auction, sell off to pay a debt.[39]
Secondly, how debtor protection is implemented in case of the collection of monetary claims, especially through the attachment of bank accounts is studied. Sealing up, distraining, freezing the debtor's property, the property's value shall be limited to the amount of the claims determined in court judgment and the execution cost; shall not significantly exceed the debtor's default value. If the amount of attachment or seizure is found out to exceed the default value, the court shall relieve the exceeded part of the property, except the property is imparticipable and the debtor does not have other property to execute or the other property is not sufficient to pay the debt.[40]
In addition, the period of the court freezing the debtor's bank deposit and other funds shall not exceed six months, except that law or judicial interpretations has other provisions; if the creditor applies for extension of such period, the court shall follow the extension procedure before the expiration of previous period, and the extension period shall not exceed 1/2 of the previous prescribed period.[41] If such period expires, the court does not conduct extension procedures, the validity of seizure, distraining, or freezing expires.[42]
Thirdly, the answer to the question of how the rules relating to court hearing are implemented is briefly given. As explained before, there is no court hearing, but only a procedure of reconsideration by the court by way of examining the application paper and attached documents of evidence by the debtor.
There is no specific data protection regulation at national level. Concerning the data protection in the course of execution, the court shall make all kinds of legal documents and relevant material open to public, except those documents involving state secrecy, business secrecy and other unsuitable documents to be open.[43] However, in practice generally such documents are not open to the public.
Regarding the provisions on bank secrecy, several laws and notices, such as Law of the PRC on Commercial Banks (2003)[44], Regulations on the Administration of Savings (1992)[45], and the Notice of the People's Bank of China on Promulgating the Provisions on the Administration of Financial Institution's Assistance in the Inquiry, Freeze or Deduction of Deposits (2002)[46] provide the obligation of banks to keep depositors' information confidential.
In China, regulations on recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments are mainly regulated in CPL. If a judgment or order made by a foreign court requires recognition and enforcement by a court of China, the party may directly apply to the intermediate court of China which has jurisdiction or the foreign court may request that according to the provisions of the international treaties concluded or acceded to by China or on the principle of reciprocity.[47] Reciprocity is interpreted as willingness of a foreign Court to enforce a judgment issued by a Chinese People's Court. If there are no international treaties or principle of reciprocity, the applicant may directly bring an action against the other party in the people's court, and apply for enforcement of the judgment made by the people's court.[48]
Another important point on this issue is that besides the requirements of the international treaties or the principle of reciprocity, the recognition and enforcement of foreign court judgments shall not violate basic principles of Chinese law, state sover-
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eignty and security or the public interest.[49] However, security and public policy is not defined in the CPL, therefore it is open to varying interpretations by Chinese courts.[50]
Concerning the enforcement of Chinese court judgments in a foreign country, CPL provides that if a party applies for execution of a judgment or order made by a people's court and the party subject to execution or its property is not within the territory of China, the party may directly apply for recognition and enforcement of the foreign court which has jurisdiction over the case, or the court may request recognition and enforcement by a foreign court according to the relevant provisions of the international treaties concluded or acceded to by China, or on the principle of reciprocity.[51]
Thus international cooperation most probably is conducted between SPC, Higher courts, or Intermediate courts in China and foreign courts. China has joined some international conventions, such as the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extra-judicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matter and the Convention on the Collection Evidences Abroad in Civil and Commercial Matters. Until 30 May 2003, 29 countries have concluded civil judicial assistance agreements with China.[52]
The enforcement tasks within the current organizational system are performed by the courts, bailiffs and other participants. The creditor or the creditor's representative is the main party who provides the information of debtor's assets. The representatives of creditors normally are lawyers in China, but lawyers do not have any privilege when investigating debtor's assets, compared to the creditor.
After the court's acceptance of application of execution, in order to fulfil enforcement task, court enforcement officials may assist the creditor to find out the bank accounts of debtor or be involved to assist the creditor to discover debtor's other assets.
Such system has some negative effects on enforcement of court judgment in practice. The main problems are as follows: Firstly, the debtor has various methods to hide its assets, so that it is difficult for the creditor to discover the assets available to execute. Secondly, the creditor has the difficulty of providing the clues of debtor's assets, and the debtor rarely report its assets; thus, the enforcement officials in the court are very busy with the investigation of debtor's assets, which leads to the inefficiency of enforcement itself, especially when the same enforcement officials are allocated with several cases. Thirdly, there are plenty barriers regarding assets investigation, the organizations which have the assisting obligation are not willing to provide relevant information.
Nowadays the difficulty of enforcement is widely recognized among the whole society. Generally speaking, the implementation of national legislations on enforcement to some extent is not effective in practice. Some statistics will be provided below to support this statement. It is fair to say that national legislation on enforcement is improving, and recently several new legislations specially to tackle the enforcement problem have been issued. However, there is still some gap between the legislation itself and its implementation in practice. The problems are not only concerned the court, but also concerned various systems in the whole society.
The management of enforcement department in the courts requires improvement. The Higher Courts have limited resources to supervise and coordinate enforcement problem in the basic courts, although the SPC request Higher Courts to unify the management of enforcement work. The courts are sometimes still possible to be influenced by local protectionism, mainly because the courts' personnel, financial, and other resources are subject to local governments. In addition, different departments (such as File, Trial, and Judicial Authentication) in the same court have poor coordination between each other.
It is difficult to get officially reliable and accurate statistics concerning the enforcement in the whole country. However, some published news may provide some statistics in some provinces or cities. For example, in the year of 2006 in Hunan Province, it is reported that in all the courts in this province, around 100,000 cases have been subject to the process of enforcement, less than 50,000 cases were enforced, and more than 30,000 cases accordingly add the number of cases that could not be enforced to the next year. Among those cases that are subject to the enforcement, there are around 30 percent cases in which the debtor was not able to pay the debt, around 20 percent cases in which the debtor did not have regular residence place and could not to be found, some cases in which the debtor have multiple bank accounts or illegally transfer their assets.[53]
In the City of Chongqing, in all the courts in 2007, there were totally 71406 valid civil and administrative judgments, 31176 cases in which the debtor fulfill their obligations voluntarily, and 30321 cases were
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subject to enforcement procedure; 6088 cases could not be enforced during the prescribed period. 2106 cases could not be enforced even after the prescribed period, among which 893 cases were because the debtor did not have property to enforce; 777 cases were because the debtor tried to escape enforcement, 99 cases were because of local protectionisms, 29 cases were because some organizations did not perform its assisting obligations, 232 cases were because the debtor's assets were difficult to discover, 15 cases were due to the inefficiency of enforcement officials, 4 cases were due to unfair courts judgment, 57 cases with other reasons.[54]
To a large extent, the legislation on current debtor protection is effective. Furthermore, debtors have various "protections" naturally against the court judgment enforcement, concerning the difficulties of enforcement from the point view of creditors. The rules regarding the income or share of property exempt from enforcement serve the interests of debtors well.
The main problem might be that some organizations or court enforcement officials sometimes abuse or do not follow the relevant legislations strictly; which can lead to failure of achievement of the purpose of legislations.
Without doubt there are some deficiencies of national law endangering the efficiency of cross-border enforcement, especially concerning the complicated procedure and various documents required. However, most difficulties derive from the enforcement problem itself, as all the problems concerning enforcement of domestic court judgments would definitely apply to the enforcement of foreign court judgments. In addition, language problems for the creditors are barriers to achieve the implementation of cross-border enforcement.
To conclude, China has made considerable progress in recent years concerning the legislation of civil judgment enforcement. The resolution of enforcement problem in China requires not only the efforts from the judicial community, but also the cooperation and support from other various systems in the society.
Civil and commercial interactions between Chinese parties and foreign parties have been increasing along with China's participation in the WTO. Accordingly, the number of cross-border civil and commercial disputes through the courts is increasing. Thus, crossborder recognition and enforcement of civil judgments between China and other countries naturally becomes an important but unavoidable challenge. It remains to be seen what measures China will take to improve international cooperation on judgment enforcement in the future. ■
NOTES
[2] In this article, China refers to the mainland of China, People's Republic of China (PRC).
[3] The Constitution, (adopted at the 5[th] Session of the 5[th] NPC on 4 December 1982, revised in 1988, 1993, 1999, 2004) , article 57 and 58; Legislation Law of the PRC (the Legislation law) (adopted at the 3[rd] Session of the 9[th] NPC on 15 March 2000 and took effective on 1 July 2000), article 7.
[4] The Constitution, 1982, article 85 and 89; The Legislation law, article 56.
[5] The Constitution, article 96, 100, 107 and 108; The Legislation law, article 63 and 73.
[6] The Legislation law, article 85.
[7] The Constitution, article 123 and 126.
[8] The Organic law of the People's Courts of PRC (The Organic law), (adopted at 2[nd] Session of the 5[th] NPC on 1 July 1979, and revised for the 3[rd] time according to the Decision of the Standing Committee of the NPC on amending the Organic law as adopted at the 24[th] meeting of the Standing Committee of the 10[th] NPC on 31 October 2006), article 2.
[9] The Organic Law, article 18.
[10] Id, article 19.
[11] Id, article 23.
[12] The Constitution, article 127.
[13] The Organic Law, article 33.
[14] The Organic Law, article 12.
[15] http://zhixing.court.gov.cn.
[16] Interpretations of the SPC of Several Issues concerning the Enforcement Procedures in the Application of Civil Procedure Law of PRC (2009), article 39.
[17] Civil Procedure Law, adopted at the 4[th] Session of the 7[th] NPC on 9 April 1991, and revised according to the Decision of the Standing Committee of the NPC on Amending the Civil Procedure Law of the PRC, which was adopted at the 30[th] session of the Standing Committee of the 10[th] NPC on 28 October 2007 and shall come into force as of 1 April 2008.
[18] Measures on the Payment of Litigation Costs, Order of the State Council (No. 481), adopted at the 159[th] executive meeting of the State Council on 8 December 2006 and come into force on 1 April 2007, article 10 (2).
[19] CPL, article 92.
[20] Provisions of the SPC for the People's Courts to Seal up, Distrain and Freeze Properties in Civil Enforcement, (adopted at the 1330[th] meeting by the Judicial Committee of the SPC on 26 October 2004, are hereby promulgated, and shall come
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into force on 1 January 2005) (Interpretation No. 15 [2004] of the SPC), article 3.
[21] Id, article 4.
[22] CPL, Article 94.
[23] CPL, Article 218.
[24] Provisions of the SPC on Several Issues concerning the People's Courts Execution Work (for Trial Implementation) (adopted at the 992[nd] meeting of the Judicial Committee of the SPC on 11 June 1998,are hereby promulgated, and shall come into force as of 18 July 1998) (Judicial Interpretation No. 15 [1998]), article 88.
[25] CPL, article 99.
[26] The Property Law of the PRC, was adopted at the 5[th] session of the 10[th] National People's Congress on 16 March 2007, is hereby promulgated for effect as of 1 October 2007.
[27] CPL, article 97.
[28] CPL, article 102 (3).
[29] Criminal Law of the PRC (1997), adopted by the 2[nd] Session of the 5[th] NPC on 1 July 1979 and amended by the 5[th] Session of the 8[th] NPC on 14 March 1997.
[30] CPL, article 217.
[31] Interpretations of the SPC of Several Issues concerning the Enforcement Procedures in the Application of CPL of PRC, ( adopted at the 1452[nd] meeting of the Judicial Committee of the SPC on 8 September 2008, come into force on 1 January 2009), article 31.
[32] Id, article 34.
[33] Partnership Enterprise Law of the PRC, (amended and adopted at the 23[rd] session of the Standing Committee of the 10[th] NPC on 27 August 2006, is hereby promulgated and shall come into force as of 1 June 2007), article 89.
[34] Id, article 33.
[35] Provisions of the SPC for the People's Courts to Seal up, Distrain and Freeze Properties in Civil Enforcement, footnote 19, article 14.
[36] Regulations of PRC on the Administration of Company Registration (Revised 2005) (Promulgated by Order No. 156 of the State Council of the PRC on 24 June 1994, and revised according to the Decision of the State Council on Revising the Regulations on 18 December 2005), article 51.
[37] CPL, article 219.
[38] Id, article 220.
[39] Provisions of the SPC for the People's Courts to Seal up, Distrain and Freeze Properties in Civil Enforcement, footnote 19, article 6.
[40] Id, article 21.
[41] Id, article 29; this article also provides that for movable property, the period shall not exceed one year; for immovable property and other property, the period shall not exceed two years.
[42] Id, article 30.
[43] Several Provisions of the SPC on Publicizing the Execution Work, (issued and promulgated on 23 December 2006, shall come into force on 1 January 2007), article 16.
[44] Adopted at the 13[th] Session of the Standing Committee of the 8[th] NPC on 10 May 1995, and amended according to the Decision on Modifying the Law of the PRC on Commercial Banks as adopted by the 6[th] Session of the Standing Committee of the 10[th] NPC on 27 December 2003, article 29 and 30.
[45] Adopted at the 97[th] Executive Meeting of the State Council, promulgated by Decree No. 107 of the State Council of the PRC on 11 December 1992, and effective as of 1 March 1993, article 5 and article 32.
[46] No.1 (2002) of the People's Bank of China.
[47] CPL, article 265.
[48] Opinions of the SPC on Some Issues Concerning the Application of CPL, (adopted at the 528[th] meeting of the Judicial Committee of the SPC and promulgated by Judicial Interpretation No.22 [1992] of the SPC on 14 July 1992), article 318.
[49] CPL, article 266.
[50] Yuan, Arthur Anyuan, "Enforcing and Collecting Money Judgments in China from a US Judgment Creditor's Perspective", The George Washington International Law Review, January 2004, All Business, http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/international-law/1052940-1.html, accessed 25 May 2009.
[51] CPL, article 264.
[52] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of P.R.C., "Table on Dates of Signing and Effective Dates of Bilateral Judicial Assistance Treaties", Updated on 30 May 2003,
http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/tyfls/tyfl/2631/t39537.htm, accessed 15 September 2009.
[53] Jie Wang, Report on "The Difficulty of Court Enforcement", 15 August 2006, http://gov.rednet.cn/c/2006/08/15/961813.htm, accessed 05 May 2009.
[54] Ping Tan, "Investigation and Analysis of court enforcement problem", 07 March 2008, http://www.chinacourt.org/, accessed 04 May 2009.
Lábjegyzetek:
[1] The Author is a PhD Candidate, LLM, Department of Law, University of Eastern Finland.
Visszaugrás
