Research on the Legislation of Electronic Evidence in China

Author: Liu Pinxin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: "A sound legal system is the cornerstone of modern civilization," this assertion has not only been proven by the historical development of human society but has also increasingly become a common consensus. Throughout human history, examples of establishing a comprehensive legal system and promoting social development and civilized progress through the rule of law are countless. However,， while maintaining national prosperity and social progress is extremely rare. This is because, after escaping primitive and ignorant stages, human society began to develop at a "gravitational acceleration," with human minds gradually opening up and people's interests and pursuits becoming increasingly diverse. In the face of increasingly complex societies, the establishment and maintenance of "order" have become an inevitable outcome. Among the various selectable solutions for establishing and maintaining order (violent, ethical, religious, and institutional), formulating a legal system and implementing and enforcing it in the name of the state is undoubtedly the most straightforward and effective approach. As history progresses, society develops, and civilization advances, the legal system, as an important spiritual achievement of humanity, continues to evolve, elevating its own standards and gradually becoming a vital pillar in maintaining social order and supporting social structures.
After the 17th century, several industrial and technological revolutions, especially the electronic information revolution of the mid-20th century, brought earth-shaking changes to human society. They not only directly altered the scale and speed of information exchange but also completely transformed people's lifestyles and ways of thinking, ushering them into a more complex and diverse new realm. Against this backdrop, traditional methods of maintaining social cohesion, such as religion and morality, have become increasingly inadequate in the face of new challenges. The ideal and practical choice seems to be to establish a rational and comprehensive legal system, providing a reasonable and feasible set of common behavioral rules for people in a diverse society, while ensuring the common interests of society and granting members a certain degree of freedom to express their individuality. This approach can both maintain the fundamental principles of social order and ensure the basic harmony and stability of society, while fully safeguarding individual freedom and creativity, thereby promoting the progress of civilization. Only in this way can stability and development, the whole and the individual, spiritual civilization and material progress all advance in parallel.
For this reason, over the past few centuries, legal reform movements have been in full swing in major countries across the East and West, coinciding with the tide of social transformation. China is a nation with a long history and splendid culture. In its millennia-old traditional culture, the spirit of upholding and valuing the law has always held a significant position. However, due to the fundamental differences between the spirit and purpose of ancient legal culture and modern society, the vast and profound traditional legal system of China could not be integrated with modern and contemporary concepts. As a result, in the mid-19th century, with the invasion of Western powers, the ancient Chinese legal system, which had endured for thousands of years, ultimately collapsed, and China's legal system began an extremely arduous process of modernization.
If we take the legal reforms of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century as a starting point, China's legal reform efforts since modern times have spanned nearly a century. During this period, Chinese society has been filled with various contradictions and struggles—path choices, ideological disputes, national salvation, and political struggles—keeping the entire country in a state of turmoil and unrest. In a sense, social transformation theoretically provides opportunities for legal reform, but prolonged social instability and frequent political upheavals have objectively had a significant impact on legal reform efforts. Thus, despite numerous opportunities and the tireless efforts of countless dedicated individuals, China's nearly century-long journey of legal reconstruction has been fraught with difficulties.
It was not until the late 1970s, with the end of the decade-long turmoil of the "Cultural Revolution," that the Chinese people began to reassess themselves and the world around them with a rational perspective, choosing a development path with greater calm and reason. This marked the beginning of China's historically significant era of reform and opening up. This comprehensive national rejuvenation movement, driven by economic reform, also brought unprecedented opportunities and vast development space for China's legal reform, which had been stagnant for nearly a century. It can be said that the 20 years following the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1978 were the most transformative and profound in Chinese history. Over these two decades, the Chinese people, guided by the great banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory, broke free from the of "leftist" ideology and carried out comprehensive reforms in politics, economics, and culture, achieving remarkable accomplishments that drew worldwide attention, making China one of the most hopeful and vibrant regions in the world. During this period, China's new-era democratic and legal system construction also made impressive progress.
In the early stages of reform and opening up, the legal nihilism that had long harmed legal development was eradicated, and "strengthening socialist democracy and improving socialist legal systems" became an important part of national political life. After nearly two decades of effort, by the mid-1990s, the overall landscape of China's legal system had undergone fundamental changes. In terms of legislation, our legislative awareness, techniques, standards, and scale had all improved significantly. In terms of adjudication, a modern judicial system centered on safeguarding citizens' basic rights and ensuring judicial fairness had been preliminarily established and was continuously being refined. More encouragingly, after nearly two decades of subtle influence, the legal awareness and legal concepts of the Chinese people had. The governance strategy of "governing the country according to law" and "building a socialist country under the rule of law" adopted at the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China had become a common consensus and demand among the entire population. This ideological shift has provided a strong intellectual guarantee for further improving China's current legal system and achieving the goal of truly governing the country according to law.
As is well known, the progress of law and the perfection of the legal system depend on both objective social conditions and needs, as well as the development of legal research and legal education. Law is a highly specialized, technical, and complex social science. The improvement of the overall legal level relies on the advancement of legal research and the continuous efforts of legal experts, including legal scholars and legal practitioners. Similarly, the overall improvement of a nation's legal system depends on the scale and quality of legal education and talent cultivation. In summary, the objective needs of social development, legal research, legal education, and other aspects are interrelated, mutually reinforcing, and mutually influential.
Over the 20 years of reform and opening up, with the progress of the nation and society, China's legal research and legal education have also made tremendous strides. After 20 years of effort, the Chinese legal community has largely eliminated the influence of "leftist" ideology, rapidly completed the overall layout of legal disciplines and the basic construction of their branches, and conducted in-depth academic research on specific legal issues to provide theoretical support and institutional advice for national legislation and adjudication. At the same time, legal education in the new era has also achieved remarkable success. Through continuous deepening of the reform of the legal education system, the scale and quality of legal talent cultivation in China have rapidly improved. A large number of new-generation legal talents, nurtured by new ideas and systems, have become the backbone of China's legal system construction, providing ample and robust talent reserves for further development.
In a sense, the efforts of the legal community over the past 20 years have made significant contributions to the progress of China's new-era legal system. Among these, legal research has played a very clear positive role in transforming the legal awareness of the entire population, improving legislative standards and efficiency, and further refining the judicial system.
Law is a superstructure built upon the economic base, and as a discipline that studies legal systems, law is highly practical and targeted. The development and changes of society inevitably impose new demands on law, which are then reflected in legal research.
Regarding China, after nearly two decades of struggle, the stage goals of reform and opening up have been successfully achieved. However, as reforms have deepened, some deep-seated issues in the state and society have also emerged, such as the renewal and reconstruction of moral values, the establishment of a true market economy order, the reform of state-owned enterprises, and the improvement of the political system. Compared to the problems encountered in previous reforms, these issues are often more complex, involve a broader scope, and are more difficult to solve. Moreover, beyond ideological renewal and policy formulation, the resolution of these complex issues ultimately boils down to the legal system.
Therefore, some insightful individuals have proposed that the current challenges or pressing tasks facing China lie in two areas: first, to consolidate national spirit and establish national moral values that meet the requirements of the new era, providing a basic value standard and life direction for society; second, to design a "good law and beautiful system" that aligns with China's national conditions and modern social spirit, providing a comprehensive, specific, clear, and reasonable set of behavioral rules to guide various social behaviors into an orderly and efficient framework.
In reality, considering China's unique historical and cultural context and current situation, the establishment of a system—i.e., a "good law and beautiful system"—should be the top priority. Establishing a sound and reasonable legal system is, of course, an extremely large-scale social project. The foundational work—such as theoretical argumentation, framework design, and corrective measures during implementation—depends on further in-depth legal research. This places higher demands on China's legal research institutions, legal education institutions, and legal theorists.
The Law School of Renmin University of China was established in 1950 and is the first regular higher education institution for legal studies founded after the birth of New China. Over the nearly half-century since its establishment, the Law School of Renmin University of China has been at the forefront of legal research and legal education in China, with a strong academic strength, rigorous and pragmatic academic atmosphere, high-quality teaching, and abundant academic achievements, ranking among the world's renowned law schools. For a long time, the legal scholars of the Law School of Renmin University of China have taken the prosperity of national law as their mission, diligently cultivating their research fields, publishing a large number of legal works, and making outstanding contributions to legal research and system construction in various eras.
Given the new situation facing China's legal research and the new requirements of the nation and society for legal work, the Law School of Renmin University of China and Renmin University of China Press, after careful study and consultation, have decided to publish this "Library of Legal Science," a series of high-quality academic works that fully reflect and represent the high standards and levels of the Law School of Renmin University of China and the broader field of Chinese law.
This "Library of Legal Science" is an open-ended, long-term academic publishing plan, led by a group of highly esteemed senior professors and renowned middle-aged and young legal scholars of the Law School of Renmin University of China, with other famous legal scholars from legal research and teaching institutions participating in the rigorous evaluation mechanism. Each year, several high-level and highly valuable domestic legal monographs will be selected for publication by Renmin University of China Press, with careful organization to achieve the goals of publishing high-quality legal works in a concentrated manner, generating economies of scale and the effect of renowned works.
The editing and publishing of the "Library of Legal Science" is a long-term task. We envision that by this opportunity, we can introduce a series of high-quality, high-level legal classics to directly provide theoretical support and assistance for the nation's legal system construction, social development, and legal research. At the same time, we hope to provide a platform for scholars, especially middle-aged and young scholars, who are dedicated to legal research to publish outstanding works, thereby cultivating first-class legal scholars for China's new era. We expect and believe that through the joint efforts of all parties, the "Library of Legal Science" can continuously publish first-class legal works, becoming an authoritative forum and a treasury of high-quality legal works in the field of Chinese legal research.
"Electronic evidence is the king of the new generation of evidence!" This is not only a prophecy of the information age but also an absolute challenge facing the field of evidence law in the contemporary world. For example, what exactly is electronic evidence? How should it be effectively extracted, preserved, and disclosed? How should its admissibility and probative value be determined? These are all essential legal issues that must be resolved. To address this, this book thoroughly reviews the current legislation worldwide, compares the similarities and differences between common law and civil law systems, discusses the current state, experience, and shortcomings of China's electronic evidence legal system construction, and finally proposes a legislative plan for electronic evidence that is suitable for China.
At the same time, this book also comprehensively explains cutting-edge theories such as the "seven-point positioning of electronic evidence," the "theory of simulated original," legal standards, authenticity standards, reliability standards, and integrity standards.