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Case Files
Notable
Legal Cases |
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 Libel Online: National People's Congress Plans to Impose Liabilities on Online
Portal Companies |
According to the China Internet Network
Information Center (中国互联网络信息中心), China now has 59.1 million
internet users, ranking it second in
the world only after the U.S. (www.cnnic.net.cn). The internet
has become a major outlet for ordinary citizens to voice
their opinions, relatively free of the usual constraints
of the print media in China. Along with the bourgeoning internet
use, courts in China’s largest cities also began to see a
rash of internet libel suits. In November 2002, the Beijing
Xuanwu District Court (北京市宣武区法院) ruled in favor of a college
student who sued a classmate for posting numerous disparaging
comments on Sohu.com (搜狐网), an extremely popular Chinese
portal. The court awarded the plaintiff RMB5,000 (US$602)
for her emotional suffering and ordered the defendant to
apologize online (Yantai Law Net 烟法网, December 4, 2002).
Another Beijing court, the Fengtai District Court (丰台区法院),
also ruled
in favor of a woman who sued a disgruntled ex-boyfriend for
online libel. He allegedly e-mailed her friends about her “immoral side” and revealed her past relationships with other men.
The case is now on appeal (Beijing Morning News 《北京晨报》, September
10, 2002). In February 2003, the Beijing Shijingshan District
Court (北京市石景山区法院) began its hearing on a libel case involving
two ex-business partners, one of whom alleged that the other
posted false information online in an attempt to sabotage
his business (Beijing Evening News 《北京晚报》, February 24, 2003).
The same Beijing Evening News report also told the story
about a pair of similar cases in Beijing and Yunnan Province
(云南省), both involving online postings which stated that the
plaintiffs were soliciting sex partners or services. The
Yunnan plaintiff was able to track down two colleagues with
the help of the police and won a libel suit against them
in the Kunming Wuhua District Beimen Court (昆明市五华区北门法庭).
The court awarded the plaintiff RMB5,000 for emotional distress
and ordered the defendants to publicly apologize. The Beijing
plaintiff sued a well-known Chinese online portal company for failing to screen the content of the posting. The court
ruled that the defendant could not be held responsible for
verifying the veracity of online postings. The court further
stated that the responsibility of the online portal company
was limited to assisting the police in tracking down the
IP address of the offender and deleting the offensive posting
after receiving the complaint from the victim. Current Chinese
laws impose liability only on those who post libelous information
on the internet. Online portal companies are required to
stop transmitting “harmful information and to report it to
the relevant authorities” (“The Resolution to Maintain Internet
Safety issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s
Congress” 《全国人民代表大会常务委员会关于维护互联网安全的决定》). However, the recent
onslaught of online libel suits has prompted the National
People’s Congress to amend its draft Civil Code (民法典) to
impose liability on online portal companies that fail to
remove libelous postings or to track down registration information of the offenders when such companies either know or
have been informed by victims of the libelous content (Beijing
Evening News, id.).
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Case Files: Beijing
Arbitration Tribunal Rules in Favor of Apartment Buyers |
Great Mall (中国第一商城) was billed by its developer as a luxury shopping,
office and apartment complex located next to some of the most
expensive real estate in Beijing’s central business district.
As of April 2002 the asking price for Great Mall apartments
were between RMB10,000 and RMB12,000 per square meter (approximately
US$134 to $161 per square foot) and 80% of the units were sold
within eight months. (Beijing Youth Daily 《北京青年报》, April 4,
2002) So what did the buyers get for paying a fortune on these
luxury apartments? According to a report by the Beijing Real
Estate Weekly 《北京楼市周刊》 on June 28, 2003, Great Mall’s developer
first delayed the delivery date by as much as 11 months. When
the units were finally completed, buyers discovered to their
dismay that much of the marble and granite promised by the
developer had been replaced with paint. After failing to reach
a settlement with the developer, 35 Great Mall buyers filed
complaints with the Beijing Arbitration Commission (北京仲裁委员会).
In June 2002, the arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of the buyers and ordered the developer to comply
with the building standards stipulated in the contract and
to pay liquidated damage until full compliance. The Great Mall
dispute is part of a trend of rising consumer complaints against
real estate developers amidst the recent building boom in China.
Since 2000, consumers filed complaints against more than 100
real estate developments in Beijing. (Beijing Business Today
《北京现代商报》, March 13, 2002) According to the All China Consumer
Association
(中国消费者协会), during the first three quarters of 2001, consumers
filed 18,592 complaints against real estate developers, compared
to 18,900 for the entire year of 1998. (Economic Daily 《经济日报》,
January 16, 2002) Most of these disputes were never resolved.
Consumers’ complaints to various government agencies are usually
unanswered and courts often refuse to take their cases. Consumers
were reported to have resorted to demonstrating in front of
developers’ sales offices, disrupting showrooms, organizing online or engaging in fist fights with the developers’ staff. (Beijing Business
Today, id.) The Great Mall case was the first arbitration court
decision in Beijing in favor of real estate consumers who have
collectively maneuvered the legal system.
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Case Files: Death Sentence for a Tiger |
| The The incident could have happened anywhere: a zoo-keeper at the Siberian Tiger
Park (东北虎林园) in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province (黑龙江省哈尔滨市) was
attacked by a tiger and died. What happened next was uniquely
Chinese and set off a lively debate about the rights of man
vs. beast. Following the incident, the zoo took the unusual
step of asking the citizens of Harbin to vote on the tiger’s
fate: (1) death by execution; (2) euthanasia by lethal injection;
(3) life-time confinement; or (4) banishment to the wild. (Harbin
Daily 《哈尔滨日报》, October 21, 2002) Harbin residents flooded the
zoo with calls for mercy, some even threatened to report the
zoo to international animal rights organizations and to hire
a lawyer for the tiger. (Beijing Youth Daily, October 22, 2002)
The rest of the nation also joined in the frenzy. Some in the
media hailed the news as a “significant exercise of democratic
decision-making”. Others argued that human life should have
a higher value than that of the tiger. One commentator accused
Harbin’s proposed public opinion poll as “practicing ‘democracy’ on an animal by eager Chinese
who never had any democratic inkling in the first place”. (www.view.news.sohu.com
搜狐视线, October 29, 2002) Lawyers and legal scholars pondered
the legal
basis for punishing the tiger, noting also the Siberian tigers’
protected status under China’s endangered animal protection
law. In the end, the zoo admitted that the incident was a result
of its own poor management and agreed to pay the victim’s family
RMB150,000 (US$18,000) as compensation. (China News Service
中国新闻社, October 23, 2002) As for the tiger, the zoo decided
to keep
it in temporary confinement until he was ready to be transferred
to the zoo’s breeding program. (Harbin Daily, October 28, 2002). |
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