On 24 Dec. 2021, the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress of China approved amendments to the PRC Civil Procedure Law (CPL). The new CPL came into effect on 1 Jan. 2022.

The CPL amendments mainly touch upon judicial confirmation procedures, small-amount litigation procedures, summary procedures, single-judge trials, online litigation, etc. The amendments add seven new articles, and revise 26 articles, and 13 of which are changed to be consistent with the expressions of the Civil Code.

The core of the new CPL is to improve the efficiency of litigation in order to alleviate the litigation explosion currently faced by Chinese courts.

Among others, the amendments focus on online litigation. For example, it stipulates that:

civil proceeding activities conducted through online litigation shall have the same legal effect as civil proceeding activities conducted offline; subject to the consent by all parties concerned, civil proceedings can be conducted online through an information platform; and, subject to the consent of the person to be served, the people’s court may serve the document by electronic means if it can confirm the receipt thereof by the person being served.