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Work of Lawyers of the People's Republic of China” adopted by the Standing Committee of the NPC in August 1980. Their duties are to give help to government organizations, enterprises and other undertakings, social bodies, people's communes, and ordinary citizens so as to ensure the just implementation of the law, and to defend the interests of the state and the collective and legitimate rights and interests of citizens. As pointed out in an article appearing in the Beijing Review: Lawyers are state legal workers who work in legal advisory offices which provide their leadership and pay their salaries. Unlike lawyers in capitalist countries who work for their clients, lawyers in China proceed from the stand of the people and safeguard the correct implementation of the law and the legitimate rights of litigants.15
Other protections are provided by the Criminal Code and Criminal Code of Procedure: Articles 136 and 137 of the former forbid the use of torture to extract confessions and gathering a crowd for purposes of "beating, smashing, and looting," while article 32 of the latter forbids the extortion of confessions by torture or duress and the collection of evidence by threat, enticement, deceit or other illegal means. Article 35 of the Criminal Code of Procedure goes on to state that in handing down judgments stress shall be laid on the weight of the evidence, and "when there is only a statement by the accused and no other evidence available, the accused shall not be considered guilty and sentenced." The Criminal Code also attempts to deal with two serious problems of the past: Article 9 provides that the law shall not be applied retroactively, and Article 135 prescribes severe punishment for state functionaries who intentionally bring false charges against people. The Criminal Code of Procedure (Articles 43-52) further establishes detailed procedures governing arrest and detention, requiring warrants for arrests, eliminating secret arrests, and setting strict conditions and time limits under which a person may be held without a proper warrant authorized by the procuratorate.
The Criminal Code is based on drafts prepared in the mid-1950s which in turn appear to have been based on the 1926 Soviet RSFSR Criminal Code. This later Code, replaced in the Soviet Union in 1958, was severely criticised in its day, and it is