Assessing China's Legal Reforms: Empirical Findings from Shanghai

The Carnegie China Program held a luncheon seminar during which Professor Gu Xiaorong and Professor Zhang Guoyan, both of the Institute of Law at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), presented findings from a joint Carnegie-SASS research project. The project surveyed more than 200 individual litigants and 187 corporate litigants in recent years and represents a critical attempt to evaluate how much progress China has actually achieved in legal reform through the use of empirical quantitative analysis. Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment served as moderator and commentator to the presentation.