Criminal Simplified Procedures and Safeguarding of Defendants Rights of Action

The New Criminal Procedure Code of China, with reference to the practices of most countries in the world, establishes a set of simplified procedure, which greatly expedites the efficiency of handling of criminal cases. However, the new procedure is not scientific or comprehensive, giving insufficient attention to the rights of defendants. Therefore, further amendments are put forward in the paper, such as: narrowing down the applicable scope of this procedure, granting defendants the rights to choice of procedures, enhancing the defending system, setting up a prosecutor's appearance system, and clarifying the hearing procedure, etc. The author argues that the prevalent simplified procedure is prone to infringe upon the action rights of defendants. Therefore, it should not be advocated.