Performing Legality: When and Why Chinese Government Leaders Show Up in Court

Abstract Since 2015, Chinese government leaders have been required by law to appear in court when citizens sue their unit or to designate an employee to take their place. We frame this policy as a demand on leaders to “perform legality,” sacrificing their time to demonstrate how seriously the government takes legal proceedings. Drawing on an original dataset of 127,529 administrative lawsuits decided between 2015 and 2018, we investigate how often government leaders appear in Chinese courtrooms, and for which kinds of cases. Overall, leaders attended 24.72% of hearings. Contrary to the State Council's instructions to prioritize attendance in lawsuits that may spiral into protest or draw public attention, leaders are no more likely to attend cases involving multiple plaintiffs or repeat litigants. Instead, they appear more often in cases where plaintiffs are represented by lawyers. These findings demonstrate that leaders tend to sidestep the most contentious cases in the legal system, complicating the conventional wisdom that stability maintenance is the overriding concern driving officials’ behavior. Yet despite leaders’ conflict avoidance, China has continued to ask leaders to personally appear in court in contentious cases. This policy is unusual in comparative perspective, and highlights the key role played by courts in General Secretary Xi Jinping’s drive to re-train the bureaucracy to take law more seriously.