On 11 Nov. 2021, China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) released the 30th batch of guiding cases, totaling six cases, which involve credit card skimming and other civil cases.

As we mentioned in “Does China Have Case Law?”, Chinese judges only apply statutory law. However, the SPC is trying to establish a certain degree of “case law”. China’s Guiding Cases (指导性案例) refer to cases selected by the SPC from the effective judgments of courts nationwide through specific procedures, and should be referred to by courts at all levels when hearing similar cases.

The published cases are mainly civil contract-related cases, involving disputes over purchase and sale contracts, financial loan contracts, credit cards, lease agreements, and construction contracts.