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This paper analyses official published data, all public cases of plant variety infringement occurring in China over the past ten years, and interviews with judges and leaders of seed production enterprises. The authors suggest that merely amending plant variety regulations will not substantially improve the level of protection of new plant varieties in China. The dilemma of plant variety protection in China lies in the imperfection of the procedural legal rules, which makes it impossible to enforce the substantive legal rules. In addition, the lack of experience of Chinese IP judges in hearing key issues of plant variety type cases has prevented them from consistently interpreting the statutory law. This article reveals the efforts of China’s Supreme People’s Court in recent years to address the aforementioned issues. This study is particularly relevant for countries that are still implementing UPOV1978. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]