Legal aid and the rule of law in the People's Republic of China

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the present state of legal aid in China. On one level, this is an easy question. All measures of quantity indicate real progress since the Chinese government decided to construct a national legal aid system in 1994. Since then, the Ministry of Justice has established 32,000 legal aid organizations and over 55,000 legal aid stations at the county, district, provincial, and municipal levels. Yet upon closer inspection, these figures raise as many questions as they answer. How many citizens need aid but didn't receive it? What impact did the legal aid experience have on those who sought assistance? What types of cases were handled, and perhaps more importantly, what types of cases weren't? This study seeks to identify answers to these and other questions.