February Resource of the Month: ChinaLawInfo and LawInfoChina aka PKULaw

Happy Lunar New Year! In honor of 2023, The Year of the Rabbit, we are featuring our Chinese law databases in the February Resource of the Month - ChinaLawInfo and LawInfoChina (also known as PKULaw).

What are ChinaLawInfo and LawInfoChina?

ChinaLawInfo (CLI) is a key database for researching the law of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It provides access to primary and secondary sources of Chinese laws, administrative regulations and rules (including for Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), judicial cases, treaties, and includes law journals, legal news, white papers, government gazettes, a legal glossary, and information on the World Trade Organization (WTO) and China. It also links to foreign and international legal research guides and free web sources of world law. The CLI interface is in Chinese.

LawInfoChina (LIC) is the English-language interface of ChinaLawInfo, and also includes full-text English translations of Chinese legal materials. CLI/LIC are now available on the PKULaw platform.

Note that Chinese law-related sources are also available via the international section of Lexis+ (LexisNexis China Law Database), Wanfang Data: Policies and Laws of China (PLOC), and the Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII). See also the Chinese Studies LibGuide.

How do I access ChinaLawInfo and LawInfoChina?

You can access the ChinaLawInfo and LawInfoChina (aka PKULaw) databases from the Law Databases webpage on the A-Z List of Law Databases page.

How do I use ChinaLawInfo and LawInfoChina?

You can browse the databases in hierarchical order by Level of Authority (national to local laws, regulations, and documents, and judicial interpretations), Topic, Issuing Authority (from National People's Congress, Supreme People's Court to local institutions), Status (effective, expired, revised, draft, etc.), Area of Law, Year Issued.

You can also search the Title or Full Text in the main search box and limit terms within the same text, the same paragraph, the same sentence. The Advanced Search feature enables you to combine searches by fields such as Title, Full Text, Issuing Authority, Date Issued, Area of Law, etc., with AND, OR, and NOT connectors. You can also search by CLI (ChinaLawInfo) citation code.

Have questions?

If you have questions about the ChinaLawInfo/LawInfoChina/PKULaw databases, please feel free to schedule a research consultation or to speak to a reference librarian through Ask a Law Librarian.