Recording & Review is a series that discusses cases where the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee decides on citizen requests to review the legality and/or constitutionality of various types of normative documents, including local regulations and judicial interpretations. Past installments can be found here.

Common sense would answer no. But the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) disagreed—according to its interpretation of a Criminal Law provision that punishes trade in “rare and endangered wild animals.” A Shenzhen man, convicted in 2017 under this provision for buying and selling parrots he himself bred, contested this interpretation before the NPC Standing Committee’s Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC)—the body charged with reviewing judicial interpretations (among other types of documents) at the request of citizens for any inconsistency with statutes. The Commission recently informed the man that the SPC would amend the interpretation. Yet it is far from clear that he won this battle. In this third installment of Recording & Review, we will tell the story of WANG Peng (王鹏) and his parrots.

Continue reading “Recording & Review Pt. 3: Are Parrots Bred in Captivity Still “Wild”?” →