About PKULaw

PKULaw

PKULaw (Chinese: 北大法宝, literally "Peking University legal treasure"), known in English as ChinaLawInfo or LawInfoChina, is one of China's most comprehensive legal information services. Based in Beijing, it was developed by the Legal Information Center of Peking University together with Beijing Peking University Yinghua Technology Co., Ltd. — the company also known as Chinalawinfo Co. Its databases give subscribers searchable access to Chinese laws and regulations from 1949 to the present, judicial cases and judgment documents, law journal articles, legal news, white papers and English translations of Chinese legal materials, updated daily. For lawyers, judges, academics and officials working with Chinese law, it is a standard research tool in China and abroad.

Origins at Peking University

University of Toronto and other library guides trace the system's birth to 1985 at Peking University's law department: 北大法宝 "was born in 1985 at Peking University Law School," developed and maintained jointly by the university's legal information centre and the Yinghua company. NYU Law's Globalex guide adds the institutional lineage: ChinaLawInfo, formerly the Information Center at Peking University, released a Chinese legal retrieval system that pioneered online legal services in China, initially covering national and local laws related to economics and foreign business. The databases were then expanded to contain national statutes, regulations, treaties and some judicial decisions dating from 1949.

The commercial and web milestones followed in the 1990s. The Peking University legal information website was founded in 1995 and is described in the University of Toronto guide as one of the earlier Chinese legal websites on the internet. In 1997 the centre launched chinalawinfo.com to market its Chinese law database online, having previously supplied English-translation databases to international services such as Westlaw and Lexis. In the summer of 1999, according to the Globalex guide, the online service was formally incorporated into China Law Information Inc. and published an English version. From 2002, ChinaLawInfo began hyperlinking provisions of laws and regulations to relevant related resources within its databases — an early form of the interlinked legal research that is now standard.

The laws and regulations database

The core of PKULaw is its laws and regulations database. The University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries describe PKULaw as providing laws and regulations from China from 1949 to the present, promulgated by Chinese national and local governments, in Chinese and English, updated daily. Coverage described by library guides includes national and local legislation, and the wider system has historically also embraced Hong Kong and Taiwanese laws and regulations and international agreements and treaties to which China is a party, as recorded in the LLRX research guide's description of the professional version.

Daily updating is operationally significant. Chinese law is produced by a large number of issuing bodies at national, provincial and municipal levels, and a research database is only useful if new promulgations, amendments and repeals are incorporated promptly and linked to the earlier versions they change. PKULaw's interlinking — connecting a provision to related rules, cases and commentary — is the feature the founding descriptions emphasise: the University of Toronto guide notes that its self-developed "法宝联想" (Fabao association) function presents legal information in an interconnected, three-dimensional way.

Judicial cases and judgment documents

The second major component is the judicial cases database, giving access to court decisions and judgment documents. Case coverage is selective rather than exhaustive — the Wisconsin library guide notes that "coverage for cases is selective" — but for practitioners the value lies in searchability: finding how courts have actually applied a statute or regulation in decided disputes. Helsinki's Finnish China Law Center guide lists the case database (司法案例) as one of the system's principal components alongside laws and regulations, law journals and English translations. Grouping cases with the legislation they interpret, inside one retrieval system, is what turns a text archive into a working research tool.

Journals, practice materials and English translations

PKULaw's structure, as described by the Finnish China Law Center and University of Toronto guides, comprises seven retrieval systems: laws and regulations; judicial cases; law journals; law firm practice materials; topical references; English translations; and "Fabao video." The law journal database supplies scholarly articles, supporting academic research and doctrinal analysis. The English translations database — LawInfoChina in its English-facing form — provides English versions of Chinese legal materials for foreign lawyers, scholars and institutions who cannot work from the Chinese text, continuing the role the centre played from the 1990s when it supplied translated databases to Western legal publishers.

Secondary materials round out the offer: the Wisconsin guide lists white papers, law journal articles and legal news among the secondary legal information included. The Peking University legal information website also historically carried columns such as legal news, online journals and专题 features, serving readers who follow Chinese legal developments as current affairs rather than as citable texts.

Technology and product history

PKULaw's history tracks the media history of Chinese legal publishing. Before the web service matured, Chinalawinfo produced the "Legal Treasure of Peking University" CD-ROM series, described by LLRX as including a bilingual China Law Retrieving System containing English translations of Chinese laws and regulations relating to foreign business, and a professional version duplicating the website's laws and regulations centre. The series used proprietary search software and was updated on a regular cycle. The move from CD-ROM to continuously updated web databases — now updated daily — is the same transition Western legal publishers made, executed here for the full corpus of PRC law from 1949 onward.

The system's builders also pioneered data mining and interlinking of Chinese legal information, according to the founding description in this directory's source material: the database "pioneered data mining and interlinking of Chinese legal information." Hyperlinking provisions to related resources from 2002, and the later association functions, are concrete instances of that claim.

Users in China and abroad

PKULaw is subscribed to by law schools, courts, law firms and government agencies in China and abroad. The pattern of library guides describing it — at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, George Washington University Law School, the University of Toronto, the University of Helsinki's Finnish China Law Center network and NYU — demonstrates its international academic footprint: it is the database foreign law libraries stock when their users need primary Chinese law. GW Law's guide notes the practical naming tangle that long-standing users will recognise: the database "was formerly known as ChinaLawInfo, and still called by that name" on library lists, while the English-language companion LawInfoChina is a separate Peking University product.

Within China, the service functions as professional infrastructure: a shared, citable source for the current text of law that practitioners, judges and officials can all consult, reducing disputes about what the law says to questions about what it means.

Position among Chinese legal databases

The Finnish China Law Center describes ChinaLawInfo as having "evolved over the last 20 years into the largest and most professional legal research system in China" — a judgement echoed in the founding materials for this profile, which call it one of China's most comprehensive legal databases. Its distinguishing assets are longevity (a lineage to 1985, earlier than the Chinese commercial internet), institutional anchoring in Peking University Law School, comprehensiveness across legislation, cases and journals, and a maintained English-translation stream that few domestic competitors match.

Access and official website

PKULaw's official website is pkulaw.com, with the principal databases at pkulaw.com/law (laws and regulations), pkulaw.com/case (judicial cases), pkulaw.com/journal (law journals) and pkulaw.com/english (English translations), as enumerated by the Finnish China Law Center guide. Access is by subscription, typically through institutional licences at universities, firms and agencies. For this directory, PKULaw is recorded as a Beijing, China legal information agency rooted in Peking University.