China's top court has issued a new guideline (link in Chinese) to provide easier access to personal protection and enhanced safeguards to domestic violence victims.

The guideline will come into effect from August 1. Enacted in 2016, China's Anti-domestic Violence Law, the first of its kind in China, sought to protect domestic violence victims by allowing them to apply for personal protection orders. However, there have been difficulties in making the law truly effective in recent years.

The guideline includes more situations arising out of domestic violence, such as denying food to family members, frequent insults, slander, threats, stalking and harassment.

It also lowers the threshold of proof collection for victims to apply for protection orders. It lists 10 types of behavior as evidence, such as phone recordings, messages or emails between victims and alleged perpetrators, records of victims' medical treatment, testimony provided by minor children, relatives, friends or neighbors, etc.

To ensure that the protection orders come in time to stop domestic violence, the guideline also clarifies that the orders can be applied for, reviewed and executed independently. For those who are unable to apply for protection orders themselves, the guideline allows close relatives, public security authorities, women's federations and others to help make the application.

By December 31, 2021, the courts had issued 10,917 personal protection orders for domestic violence victims.