Evidence and Evidence Rules in Chinese Civil Litigation

2020/1/8

Evidence is the basis and the first important part of a civil litigation. As a result, investigating, collecting, analyzing and assembling the evidence are the first important work for a civil litigation case.

According to the Civil Procedural Law of PRC, the principle of producing evidence is that either party is obliged to provide evidence to support his/her/its claim. Therefore, the clients need to produce evidence to prove that the facts they claim are valid.

The Chinese lawyer's right to investigate evidence is low. For some evidence, the Chinese lawyer doesn't have right to investigate, such as the file material of an individual's house and an individual's bank account information. The China lawyers need to apply to the court to investigate this evidence. The Beijing court can issue an investigation order to a lawyer and the lawyer can take it to carry out investigation. However, this way is not applicable around all China.

Moreover, the application of evidence investigation must be submitted to the court no later than 7 days before expiration of time limit of producing evidence. When submitting evidence to the court, we must submit an evidence listing that should include the name of evidence and the problem evidence can prove.

In the lawsuit, time limit of producing evidence is very noteworthy. In most cases, the court does not specify the time limit of producing evidence in advance，but sometimes does. Anyway, the time limit of producing evidence must be in the trial for the first instance. After expiration of the time limit of producing evidence, the plaintiff or the defendant has no right to submit evidence except new evidence.

Evidence and proof are the most important part of litigation, and whether an evidence will be adopted by the court involves several aspects. Chinese law states that to prove whether a legal fact is true, it must meet a highly probable standard of proof.

Therefore, we recommend that foreign clients must hire lawyers when participating in litigation in China to avoid mistakes in proof and cross-examination.