The book addresses the issues of China's modern social order, as influenced by an evolving economic order and especially legal order. Ongoing Chinese modernisation is prompted by both domestic needs and WTO commitments, which includes both economic and legal reforms. Emphasis is placed on legal reforms, one of the most important areas of much needed reforms. The directional development of China's legal order has national, interregional and international implications, which affect the growth and prosperity of both China and the world's economy. A problem is an evolving inter-relationship between social order, economic order, and legal order, which can be described as either complementary or paradoxical. However, a paradoxical inter-relationship between these sources of order is problematic, because it effectively renders needed legal reforms that are increasingly more difficult to implement. This book explores both the complementary and paradoxical inter-relationship between these sources of order, the author proposes a "novel" and "viable" alternative for transplanting a more Western constitutional design in China.

The book was first published in 1997, and was awarded the first prize of scientific research by the Ministry of Justice during the ninth Five-Year Plan of China. In 2005, it was adopted the text book for the postgraduates of law majors. In 2009, it was awarded the second prize of the best books on law in China. The book discusses from different aspects the long legal tradition in China, and it not only helps us to have a further understanding of Chinese legal system but also combines theories and practice and illustrate the modern legal transition which probes the history of Chinese legal system. As is known to us all, China is a country with a long legal history, which can be traced back to more than three thousand year ago. So the legal tradition of China has been passed down from generation to generation without any interruptions. This feature is peculiar to Chinese legal history which is beyond all comparison with that of other countries such as ancient Egypt, ancient India, ancient Babylon and ancient Persia. Through the study of Chinese legal history we can have a deeper understanding of the histories, features, origins and the transition of Chinese legal tradition. The Chinese legal tradition originated from China, and it is the embodiment of the wisdom and creativity of Chinese civilization. The great many books, researching materials, legal constitutions, archives, files and records of different dynasties in China have provided us with rare, complete and systematic materials to research. The book has a complete, systematic and detailed research on Chinese legal tradition and its transition and it gives people a correct recognition of the process of the perfection of laws during its development and its position as well as its value in the social progress in order to grasp its regular patterns. It also has showed us the most valuable part and core of Chinese legal Tradition and it is a summary of Chinese legal tradition and its transition from different perspectives, different angles and different levels. From the book, we can see that the ancient Chinese Legal Culture had once shocked the world and exerted great influence on the civilization of the world legal system, especially the legal systems in Asian countries. The book also has discussed the reestablishment of law in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Chinese law’s transition to modernity. In a word, the book has not only combined the legal system and the legal culture together, but also integrated the important historical figures and events ingeniously and it is a valuable and readable book with authenticity.

This is an original interdisciplinary study of Chinese law, its language, and political institution. Evolving within a complex literary framework over thousands of years, Chinese language has lost its conceptual distinctiveness to its multilevel and overlapping meanings and connotations. Chinese law has become inflated with contrary rulings and exceptions. This mass of rules requires an extra-lingual (legal) authority to redefine boundaries and specify applications. This book follows and continues the author's, The Boundaries of Meaning and the Formation of Law (McGill University Press) by illustrating how language shapes the formation, application, and administration of law in various cultural environments. Law and Politics in Modern China is an important book for those interested in Chinese history, culture, law, and politics. It also provides refreshing insights about the way that law continues to function after its language matures and creates contradictions and loopholes within its system of rules--one of the most important issues facing Western legal administration in the immediate future.

This book adopts Durkheim’s legal perspective to treat law as a symbol of social solidarities to examine Chinese society. The work analyzes changes in the nature of social solidarity from observing changes in laws, thus drawing together western socio-legal theory and distinctive Chinese conditions. It draws on Durkheim’s theoretical framework and methodology to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the role of law using theories of others such as Habermas and by taking into account the discussion of power and the conflicts of interests in analyzing key social features during transition. The analysis of social anomie in terms of the changes of juridical rules as well as the changes in the nature of social solidarity provides an inspiring perspective to look into contemporary social problems. The book will be essential reading for researchers and academics working in the areas of socio-legal studies, legal theory and law and society in China.

This book delivers a comprehensive, insightful, and updated analytic description of contemporary Chinese legal system. From a macro perspective, it presents, both theoretically and empirically, the evolution of Chinese law, describing its distinctive features, comparing it with other experiences across the world, and exploring the influence of economic, social, cultural, and technological factors thereon. From a micro perspective, based on the latest laws and regulations so promulgated and relevant research, this book briefly summarizes the basic theories and knowledge of existing law in the PRC, including the Constitution, civil law, criminal law, administrative law, procedural law, intellectual property law, economic law, etc. With this book, not only law students, lawyers, and those who have a background in Chinese law but also general readers can catch a penetrating glimpse into the fast-changing Chinese legal system.

China's rapid socioeconomic transformation of the past twenty years has led to dramatic changes in its judicial system and legal practices. As China becomes more powerful on the world stage, the global community has dedicated more resources and attention to understanding the country's evolving democratization, and policymakers have identified the development of civil liberties and long-term legal reforms as crucial for the nation's acceptance as a global partner. Modern Chinese Legal Reform is designed as a legal and political research tool to help English-speaking scholars interpret the many recent changes to China's legal system. Investigating subjects such as constitutional history, the intersection of politics and law, democratization, civil legal practices, and judicial mechanisms, the essays in this volume situate current constitutional debates in the context of both the country's ideology and traditions and the wider global community. Editors Xiaobing Li and Qiang Fang bring together scholars from multiple disciplines to provide a comprehensive and balanced look at a difficult subject. Featuring newly available official sources and interviews with Chinese administrators, judges, law-enforcement officers, and legal experts, this essential resource enables readers to view key events through the eyes of individuals who are intimately acquainted with the challenges and successes of the past twenty years.

"Sainthood" has been, and remains, a contested category in China, given the commitment of China's modern leadership to secularization, modernization, and revolution, and the discomfort of China's elite with matters concerning religion. However, sainted religious leaders have succeeded in rebuilding old institutions and creating new ones despite the Chinese government's censure. This book offers a new perspective on the history of religion in modern and contemporary China by focusing on the profiles of these religious leaders from the early 20th century through the present. Edited by noted authorities in the field of Chinese religion, Making Saints in Modern China offers biographies of prominent Daoists and Buddhists, as well as of the charismatic leaders of redemptive societies and state managers of religious associations in the People's Republic. The focus of the volume is largely on figures in China proper, although some attention is accorded to those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other areas of the Chinese diaspora. Each chapter offers a biography of a religious leader and a detailed discussion of the way in which he or she became a "saint." The biographies illustrate how these leaders deployed and sometimes retooled traditional themes in hagiography and charismatic communication to attract followers and compete in the religious marketplace. Negotiation with often hostile authorities was also an important aspect of religious leadership, and many of the saints' stories reveal unexpected reserves of creativity and determination. The volume's contributors, from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, China, and Taiwan, provide cutting-edge scholarship. Taken together, these essays make the case that vital religious leadership and practice has existed and continues to exist in China despite the state's commitment to wholesale secularization.

Vols. 1 and 2 cover U.S. law enforcement. Vol. 3 contains articles on individual foreign nations, together with topical articles on international law enforcement.

This text addresses the corporate causes of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the emergence of modern Republican China. Weaving together political, legal and business histories, it focuses on the key relationship between China, cement and corporations, and demonstrates how the particular circumstances of cement manufacturing in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China serve to illuminate key aspects of Chinese political economy and illustrate the importance of legal frameworks in the emergence of industrial enterprises. Examining the centrality of legal personality in China’s historical story, seen from the angle of cement manufacturing corporations, it offers an alternative historical perspective on the making of the modern Chinese States and delves into the involvement of larger-than-life historical figures of modern China such as Yuan Shikai, Chiang Kai-shek and the revolutionary and the father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, in the unfolding of these events.

Graduate students have traditionally learned a good part of what they know about sources and research aids on modern China through hearsay and serendipity, in unsystematic and unreliable bits and pieces. The field has now developed to the point where this need not and ought not to be so. It is now possible for beginning researchers to start with some shared basic knowledge of research aids and documentary resources. This research guide is meant to provide that knowledge. The user of this guide is envisaged as an American graduate student in history or the social sciences who is already familiar with the major English-language secondary literature on modern China and is about to begin original research, either for a seminar paper or for a dissertation.