Chen Weidong: Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law should be codified

China News Weekly reporter: Zhou Qunfeng

Published in the 1260th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on November 16, 2026

On November 6, the National People’s Congress website released the Criminal Procedure Law (Draft Amendment) for comments. Four days ago, the draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law was submitted to the 25th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress for review.

This is the fourth revision of the Criminal Procedure Law. Chen Weidong, a national first-level professor at Renmin University of China and executive vice president of the China Criminal Procedure Law Research Association, has studied criminal procedure law for more than 40 years and participated in the four revisions of the criminal procedure law. In an exclusive interview with China News Weekly, Chen Weidong said that throughout the more than 40 years of criminal procedure legislation, my country has made important achievements in the system construction and value selection of criminal procedures, from "having laws to follow" to "good laws and good governance", and from "fighting crime" to "protecting human rights." "Every time the law is revised, I feel the progress of our country's criminal procedure law. Whether it is a big step or a small step, we are always moving forward." Chen Weidong said.

What's different about this revision?

"China News Weekly": The National People's Congress and its Standing Committee amend many laws every year, but the revision of the Criminal Procedure Law still attracts great attention. Why?

Chen Weidong: The Criminal Procedure Law is the basic law that regulates the country's prosecution of crimes and protects citizens' rights. It is responsible for punishing crimes and protecting human rights. It is a "mini-constitution that protects human rights." It can be said that every revision will not only attract the attention of judicial organs, legal practitioners, scholars, and media people, but also the attention of criminal suspects, defendants, and their families who may be held criminally responsible.

For example, suspects and defendants will be concerned about how their personal freedom and property will be treated during the investigation stage of the public security organs; lawyers will be concerned about how the lawyer's practice space will change. The answers to these questions can be found in practicing the law.

"China News Weekly": You have participated in the revision of the Criminal Procedure Law four times. Compared with the previous times, what are your different feelings this time?

Chen Weidong: At the beginning of reform and opening up, the criminal procedure system was not taken seriously in our country. In the eyes of many people, the Criminal Procedure Law was only a tool to ensure the implementation of criminal law. As people's concept of the rule of law has improved, the revision of this law has received more and more attention.

After the reform and opening up, great changes have taken place in my country's society, economy and other aspects, and the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law have gradually become out of touch with the actual social development. Therefore, in 1996, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress began to comprehensively revise the then Criminal Procedure Law. At that time, I was engaged in the teaching and research of criminal procedure law in the Law Department of Renmin University of China. I was one of the six scholars who participated in the entire revision of the Criminal Procedure Law. At the age of 36, I was the youngest among them.

A major highlight of that revision was the shift from an inquisitorial criminal procedure model to an adversarial criminal procedure model with the judge as the center and equal confrontation between the prosecution and defense, which enhanced the litigation rights of criminal suspects and defendants. After the second and third revisions, "respecting and protecting human rights", "establishing a criminal trial system in absentia, and establishing a system of leniency for guilty pleas and punishments" were included in the law.

The Criminal Procedure Law has undergone three revisions, and has made significant progress in terms of the number and content of articles, as well as in system design and procedural structure, and has basically met the people's expectations for the rule of law in various periods.

This modification is significantly different from the previous ones. On the one hand, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's judicial practice of criminal proceedings has continued to make new progress, the reform of the judicial system has continued to achieve new results, a number of wrongful cases have been corrected in accordance with the law, and the concept of fair justice has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. It is necessary to sum up experience in a timely manner and fix it through legal norms.

On the other hand, in recent years, problems such as "distant-sea fishing" and "unusual death caused by accusations" have emerged in practice, which have seriously hindered judicial justice. It is necessary to revise the law again, plug loopholes in the system, and strengthen supervision and restrictions.

"China News Weekly": What are the highlights of this revision that impressed you most?

Chen Weidong: There are many highlights in this revision, from basic principles to basic systems to basic procedures. For example, it is clear in the basic principles that "the presumption of guilt is prohibited"; the draft also adds a provision that those whose detention period is about to exceed the possible prison term should be released or have their compulsory measures changed, which will help reduce the detention rate and reduce extended detention. Through these modifications, it will help to solve the old judicial concepts and stubborn problems such as "arrest on suspicion of crime" and "push to the end".

It is unrealistic to completely abolish the "residence system" that has attracted much attention at this stage. This draft retains two applicable crimes (suspected of crimes endangering national security and crimes of terrorist activities), which means that the applicable space of this system is greatly reduced, which is a great progress and is conducive to further standardizing the operation of judicial power and improving judicial credibility.

Expansion of defense rights is progress in the rule of law

"China News Weekly": This draft also makes additions to the property involved. What do you think?

Chen Weidong: The current criminal procedure law has very thin and unclear provisions on the property involved in the case, which has resulted in some property involved in the case being arbitrarily seized and frozen (sealed, detained, and frozen). Some case-handling agencies adopt a "one investigation" and "one freeze" disposal model for the property involved, which can easily lead to adverse effects such as a break in the capital chain and business setbacks for the individuals or companies involved in the case.

Therefore, this revision of the law has added a number of provisions to plug loopholes. For example, it is emphasized that the attributes of property should be strictly distinguished, the scope of measures taken should be standardized, and the adverse impact on normal business activities should be reduced; it is stipulated that when the public security agency seizes and freezes in other places, the public security agency where the property involved in the case is located should be notified; the relevant provisions on the "two lines of revenue and expenditure" should be improved to make it clear that the relevant property must not be misappropriated, set aside, returned or returned to the case-handling unit in disguised form, and must not be linked to the guarantee of case-handling funds.

"China News Weekly": The defense rights of lawyers have also been clearly expanded in this draft?

Chen Weidong: Yes, the draft adds a new step to strengthen the protection of the rights of duty lawyers and defense lawyers. For example, some detention centers previously agreed to arrange a meeting with a lawyer, but then claimed that the lawyer could not meet due to "arraignment conflicts." This draft adjusts the original article "detention centers should promptly arrange interviews with detainees within 48 hours at the latest," to "guarantee that they can see detainees within 48 hours at the latest." The purpose is to require detention centers not to prevent lawyers from interviewing for any reason.

In addition, according to the Criminal Procedure Law, the procuratorate only has the right to notify legal aid lawyers for minors, blind, deaf-mute, mentally ill, and special subjects who may be sentenced to life or death during the prosecution stage. Even if suspects in ordinary cases do not have a lawyer, the procuratorate cannot proactively assign them. This draft adds a new article that allows the procuratorate to notify legal aid agencies to assign lawyers to suspects who "may be sentenced to more than three years" and have no defenders. This ensures the rights of many suspects and expands the defense rights of lawyers, which is a great progress.

Of course, the lawyer's right to defense can be further protected. The improvement of the criminal procedure law is closely related to the improvement of the criminal defense system. The history of the development of criminal litigation is the history of the continuous development and expansion of the right of defense. I believe that “promoting full coverage of lawyer defense in criminal cases” should be integrated into the law in the revision of the Criminal Procedure Law.

For example, in judicial practice, lawyers play a limited role in the plea and punishment stage. It is recommended to set up special procedures in the plea and punishment stage to fully listen to the opinions of defense lawyers. A full coverage system for lawyer defense should be established from the investigation stage to the review, prosecution, and trial stages, determine the right of lawyers to be present, and strengthen the protection of lawyers' defense rights.

Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law should be codified

China News Weekly: Is there anything you regret about this revision?

Chen Weidong: There are two important court trial issues that have been hotly discussed in this revision of the law. Scholars generally believe that in current criminal cases, the phenomenon of "witnesses in the first-instance court not appearing in court and the court of second-instance not convening" is still quite prominent, which is an important issue hindering the implementation of the "trial-centered" system and is also the issue that the industry has been most concerned about for many years.

At present, the published draft amendment has restored the current legal requirement for witnesses to appear in court "when the people's court deems it necessary", and has deleted the seven circumstances for second-instance hearings such as "objection to the first-instance judgment" added in the previous draft amendment.

I believe that the decision-making power of whether witnesses will appear in court and whether the second instance will be held cannot be entirely left to the People's Court. The court cannot decide whether a witness will appear in court solely based on the pre-trial materials from the police and the dossier from the procuratorate. This is neither logically feasible nor feasible in practice.

Allowing "witnesses to go to court and the second instance to proceed smoothly" is an important indicator to measure whether the court's trial ecology is in line with international trends and trial rules.

"China News Weekly": For a long time, you have been calling for the revision of the Criminal Procedure Law to take the path of codification. What is the reason?

Chen Weidong: Judging from the number of articles, the current number of articles in my country's Criminal Procedure Law is only 308, which is obviously too few compared with foreign countries. Looking around the world, most countries have more than 500 articles of criminal procedure law, such as Germany (500 articles), France (803 articles), Japan (507 articles), and Italy (746 articles). Moreover, judging from the general rule, there are more procedural law provisions than substantive law, but my country's criminal law provisions (453 articles) are obviously more than the criminal procedure law provisions. The direct problem caused by the lack of provisions in the Criminal Procedure Law is that the procedures are rough, the prescribed principles are abstract, and the operability needs to be improved.

The compilation of the criminal procedure code is a summary of historical experience and the only way to build and improve the criminal procedure system with Chinese characteristics and the characteristics of the times. I advocate the goal of "codification" and structural and comprehensive revision of the Criminal Procedure Law, rather than "checking for omissions and filling in gaps" to make it a substantive modern code. Currently, I and my team have drafted a total of 1,077 articles of expert suggestions for the Criminal Procedure Code.

Of course, revising the law is a step-by-step process, and there is no accurate timetable for when the codification of my country's criminal procedure law will be implemented, but I believe that its codification is the general trend.