In progress; last updated (partially) March 26, 2024
Please contact me (donaldclarke@law.gwu.edu) about any inaccuracies or suggestions.
Below is a description of some of the resources for Chinese law research available at the law school (in most cases, through the law school library). It is not a complete list; its purpose is to bring to your attention valuable sources you might not otherwise know about. For Chinese law research in general, check out my page on research guides to Chinese law.
The author is a librarian at Washington University Law School in St. Louis. New edition, published in 2023.
The following two periodicals are very good for keeping up with the latest in Chinese law, at least as far as it's of interest to foreign lawyers and business people. Both are currently available on Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw. The links to the electronic versions work if you're connecting from a GW IP address.
Note: Many of these resources are accessible only from a GWU or GWU Law School IP address, so you may need to use the GW VPN. Accessibility changes over time, so what works or doesn't work one month may not work or work another month. Keep trying!
The GWU Law Library provides access to the Pkulaw.cn law database. This database was formerly known as ChinaLawInfo, and still called by that name on the Burns Law Library database list. If the link here doesn't work, try accessing it through the Burns Library Database List. It is a Chinese-language legal database maintained by Peking University. The Library no longer subscribes to LawInfoChina, an English-language database also maintained by Peking University.
This is a quite comprehensive free database of Chinese laws and regulations. It includes a great deal of local legislation, departmental regulations, and Supreme People's Court interpretations. The main drawback is that it is not full-text-searchable; you can search by terms in the title or the issuing body. A nice feature is that you can separate central from local legislation in your results. After clicking on the above link, scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the search function. There is also a fee-paid version of this database that offers full-text access not only to laws, but also to cases and secondary materials.
An excellent source for articles from virtually all periodicals in China on virtually all subjects. GWU's access is only to a subset, but it's the subset that's useful to us: law, economics, and social science generally. This database is searchable by author, journal name, title, keywords, and full text. It is, of course, in Chinese. You can download PDF files of articles you find. This is now accessible from a GW (including law school) IP address: Chinese interface | English interface. If you are properly signed in, you should see a smiling emoji plus "Welcome" in English or Chinese on the left of the screen under a line of tabs. If you have difficulties, try using a different browser.
To access, (1) go through the Gelman home page --> COLLECTIONS --> Global Resources Center--> Databases and Research Guides --> China Studies --> Databases (tab at the top of the screen) --> scroll down to Duxiu; or (2) click on this direct link from a GW IP address.
The university's China Documentation Center has a list of China-studies electronic databases. Go to this page from a GW IP address; otherwise, some of the links below may not work. Note in particular the following databases you can find there:
- The Policies and Laws Database. This is a subset of the Wanfang Database, which includes a number of other databases (including one of Chinese periodical).
- China Data Online (about which see below).
- ChinaInfoBank, an excellent database that provides access to many different kinds of information -- in particular economic news, but also laws, statistics, and corporate documents.
- Duxiu book database. Here's an edited description from Jing Zhong, a former Gelman librarian: "A kind of combined Google Scholar and Google Books for Chinese material. This is a huge content-based database composed of 800,000,000 full-text pages, with very flexible searches (full-text, books, articles, theses, web pages, and newspapers). It provides information about and, in many cases, full-text searching and/or limited views (up to about 20 pages) of 2,600,000 Chinese books. It is a useful tool for discovering bibliographic information, for locating particular search terms within a text, and for getting a preview of a text. Internet Explorer is recommended when accessing this database."
- Chinamaxx book database. ChinaMaxx contains full-text Chinese e-books from cover to cover in the fields of Chinese economy, politics, military affairs, international relations, security, and social studies
Several useful databases are accessible through Gelman Library; check out the Global Resources Center. Especially useful are the following:
- Bibliography of Asian Studies: This is a great database that is a must for research on any China-related topic. In addition to indexing periodical articles, it also indexes chapters in edited volumes, which can otherwise be very hard to find. Possibly listed under "Other English Language Databases" on the linked page.
- China Data Online: Want to know the gross domestic product of Yunnan in 1985? Here's where to go. This contains the contents of all those yearbooks that China produces so copiously. Unfortunately, the data are entered manually and that means mistakes happen.
- China Statistical Yearbooks Full-Text Database: The database provides access to 847 titles published in China. It comprises 5740 volumes of statistical yearbooks and census and survey data on Chinese national economic and social development, including law. You can also access it via the China Documentation Center's home page (http://library.gwu.edu/collections/GRC/asia/cdc) by clicking the Database link.
- Economist Intelligence Unit: They have quite an extensive set of publications on China, regularly updated.
- US government translation services: Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports (1941-1996) and World News Connection (1995-2013). These services provided translations of print and broadcast material from China, and were widely used by the China studies community. The translations are typically quite good. Occasionally they have translations of statutes. Hint: make "("Article 1" and "Article 2" and "Article 3")" part of your search string. Although the US government is still doing these translations, regrettably they are not being made available to the public any more.
Human Resources
The China librarian at Gelman Library is Dr. Khamo Khamo. You may contact her at khamo.khamo (at) email.gwu.edu.