LE 'AZIONI PER IL PUBBLICO INTERESSE' IN CINA

There are growing signs of the emergence of a new Chinese civil society which stems from a heightened consciousness of the Chinese people to their rights and displays a greater willingness to face challenges in order to defend such rights by means of litigation. Evidence of such a shift can be detected in the intensification of what has been defined, in Chinese, as gongyi susong (literally: public intrest litigation). Although this kind of litigation constitutes a rather recent development in China, recourse to such a device has seen an exponential growth in recent years and has become one of the fundamental topics of debate and investigation in fields which extend well beyond scholarship and case law. The Chinese definition itself discloses an indebtment to American conceptions of public interest litigation, and a growing number of NGOs, law firms, lawyers (and, at times, individuals) file such cases almost on a daily basis, reminding government authorities of their duties and obligations under the law. This has, in some instances, led to outright confrontation with the regime in the name of public interest. What is meant, concretely, in China, by “public interest litigation”? What tools can Chinese citizens and their lawyers use to defend the public interest? Moreover, what is the public interest which “gongyi susong” claims seek to safeguard? The present thesis addresses and provides some insight on the foregoing questions, through the lens of a series of interviews carried out by the author in 2009 with Chinese lawyers based in Beijing.