THE CRIMINAL LEGAL AID IN CHINA
The subject of the article is the criminal legal aid in China. The main goal of this work is to introduce the current state of legal aid in criminal cases in China to Russian scholars and legal professionals. Results. Criminal Legal Aid in China appeared relatively recently, and in the last years of its operation was marked by a number of achievements and some problems. Legal assistance in criminal cases is an integral part of the institute of legal aid in China and plays an invaluable role in ensuring due process, maintaining the balance between prosecution and defense, as well as in guaranteeing human rights. This study contains a general description of the current state of criminal legal aid in China, highlights inherent problems of this institution and describes prospects of its development. This work is based on the Criminal Procedure Code of the PRC in version of 2013 year, and provides analysis of the Russian and Chinese special literature, Chinese law and practice, as well as the official Chinese statistics. The scope of legal assistance in criminal cases is extremely narrow, the funding is not enough, and the quality leaves much to be desired. These and other shortcomings already have become obstacles to the development of the Chinese criminal procedure law. Despite of a number of changes to the legal regulation of the institute in the 2013 edition of the PRC Criminal Procedure Code, a number of issues remained unresolved. Conclusions. The existing difficulties can be overcame by expanding the scope of legal aid, increase in funding and introduction of public defenders. To increase funding in the budgets proposed to establish minimum public funding of legal aid, to attract non-governmental and international funding, to strengthen control and to ensure openness and transparency of spending. To improve the quality of legal aid PRC government should rise up compensations for lawyers, introduce the institution of public defender and create a mechanism for evaluating the quality of legal assistance.