Many Chinese scholars advocate transplanting the American Gideon to improve the quality of criminal defense and legal aid in China. Nowadays, less than thirty percent of criminal defendants in China have counsels to represent them, and this has worsened since the year of 2012, because laws and policies have expanded the legal aid to more candidates, while the appropriations cannot keep pace with the explosive caseload. Institutional impediments also frustrate lawyers’ efforts in providing effective representation, and there is no remedy for ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. This paper calls for a fuller understanding of the Gideon’s broken promise in the US, and argues that the forces most essential to the support of the Chinese Gideon can only come from China’s practice and experience.

I. Introduction
 II. Two Levels of the Gideon in China
  A. Right to Counsel
  B. Right to Effective Assistance of Counsel
  C. The 1996 CPL Reform and its Lessons
 III. Funding Matters: Insufficient Appropriationsand New Chall enges
  A. A Basic Picture of the Appropriation and its Implications
  B. New Challenges after the 2012 CPL and the 18th National People’s Congress
 IV. Institutional Obstacles to the Chinese Gideon
  A. Effectiveness of China’s Legal Aid
  B. The Linear Structure and Institutional Obstacles
 V. Difficult and Risky Lawyering
 VI. Inadequate or Inaccessible Remedies for theGideon Claims
 VII. Conclusion
 References

• Luye Mou(Zhejiang University Guanghua Law School)