The Law Library is testing Westlaw China, a new database with primary and secondary sources on China laws:

http://www.westlawchina.com/login.php

The trial user ID and password can be found in YLS Inside Research Sites under Library Database Passwords. 

Legal periodicals are often a good starting point when you are researching a broad legal topic.  The Law Library has access to three online legal journal databases in Chinese: Chinese Academic Journals (CAJ), Wan Fang's Chinese Online Journals (COJ) and ChinaLawInfo's journal collection.  For those who are interested in researching China law but are not proficient in Chinese, HeinOnline (Law Journal Library and Foreign & International Law Resources Collection), JSTOR and SpringerLink's Frontiers of Law in China include a variety of China-related legal and inter-disciplinary journal titles published in English.  The latter, a collaborative publication by publisher Springer with Renmin University in Beijing consists of English translation of selective law review articles originally published in the vernacular by universities in China. While the quality of the English translation varies, the selection of articles provide an overview of legal issues currently of interest to the Chinese legal community.

For better access, the China Law Research Resources page in Morris (under Research tab) now has a link to a union list of China-Related Electronic Serial Titles included in the three journal databases. The selective list includes the more commonly known journals currently accessible from three A to Z lists in the law library research website (Legal Databases, Yale University Library E-Journals & Newspapers and Other Databases).  They are arranged alphabetically by their Pinyin or English titles in the union list. Information relating to the coverage of each journal title is available as well as direct links to the databases.

Lastly, a recent blog post in Law Librarian Blog includes a useful bibliography of China-related journal articles and treatises published in English and German in 2007compiled by Dr. Knut Benjamin Pissler of Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law.  See here.

For those interested in the recent legal developments in China, here's a list of new Chinese library acquisitions. They include commentaries on the new Property Law and Labor Contract Law.  Two titles may be of interest to those doing empirical research: Zhu Jingwen's work with statistical data on the Chinese court system (in Chinese) and China Development Review, a publication by the Development Research Council, the policy research arm of the PRC State Council (in English and Chinese).

The PRC National People's Congress in March approved a government reorganization plan that consolidated several ministries and appointed new officials to top leadership posts. See the latest analysis from the US-China Business Council.  For an interesting commentary on the developments of the Chinese party leadership, see CRS Report  "China's 17th Communist Party Congress 2007: Leadership and policy implications".