The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in 1978 marked the initiation of the policy of reform and opening up in China, beginning a new chapter in the construction of a socialist legal system. The first Chinese criminal procedure law was promulgated the following year and was revised twice in 1996 and 2012. Although remarkable progress has been made, the level of the rule of law in China’s criminal procedure must still be improved to meet the goal of modernizing the criminal rule of law.