Is Chinese Law Opaque by Design?

China is often perceived as being opaque or lacking transparency. The question of transparency came to the forefront again in July 2021, when China rejected the EU’s requests for information about three judicial decisions issued by Chinese courts in relation to patents. China had previously rejected similar requests from the US in 2006. China argued that the decisions requested by the EU had “no legal effect of general application”. China previously indicated that there were many other channels allowing bilateral information exchange relating to IP protection. The fact is that American and European private parties in those specific cases were mobilising their respective governments to press the Chinese side to publish the decisions when the parties concerned already had access to the relevant decisions.

Parallels can be drawn with Singapore, which selectively withholds certain sensitive information. In a recent case, a Singaporean MP questioned a minister about the undisclosed criteria for naturalisation, to which the minister responded that revealing such details could invite abuse and compromise the integrity of the process.

There is a fine balancing act between upholding transparency in the rule of law and preventing the potential misuse of this transparency, especially when it comes to sensitive issues.