In the past two decades, China has endured, together with the rest of the world, two pandemics originating in Guangdong and Wuhan. While the severity and management of these pandemics varied, they both stemmed from the same root cause—the absence of constitutional enforcement and protection of fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and press. In the global village today, especially given China’s size and impact, the Chinese constitutional democracy is critical not only for China itself, but also for the whole world. Largely following China’s current (1982) Constitution, this book aims to produce a contemporary “landscape” of Chinese constitutional developments in essentially all major areas. Despite the lack of constitutional enforcement and serious backlashes in recent years, the author believes that the Constitution still matters, as China has achieved significant de facto progress in human rights and the rule of law since its Reform and Opening in 1978. Particularly, increasing number of citizens are becoming aware of their constitutional rights, which they are eager to defend in their interest. Ultimately, the future of China (and the world) depends on the efforts of the people themselves to promote its constitutional reforms and enforcement

In The Constitutional Identity of Contemporary China: The Unitary System and Its Internal Logic, Han Zhai offers a profound understanding of China’s constitutional history with her account of constitutional identity of multi-layered states in other parts of the world. This book successfully bridges China’s constitutional complex and the emerging common theory of constitutional law with methodological innovations. In constitutional comparison, this work’s treatment of the Kingdoms of Spain and the Netherlands provides effective structural and historical analysis. This book does not only awaken China’s constitutional identity in contemporary scholarship but also presents rich possibilities in the constitutional study and the way we understand a country’s fundamental arrangements in its national context

Critical Issues in Contemporary China: Unity, Stability and Development comprehensively examines key problems crucial to understanding modern-day China. Organized around three interrelated themes of unity, stability and development, each chapter explores distinct issues and debate their significance for China domestically and for Beijing’s engagement with the wider world. While presenting contending explanatory approaches, contributors advance arguments to further critical discussion on selected topics. Main issues analysed include: political change military transformation legal reforms economic development energy security environmental degradation food security and safety demographic trends migration and urbanization labour unrest health and education social inequalities ethnic conflicts Hong Kong’s integration cross-Strait relations. Given its thorough and up-to-date assessment of major political, social and economic challenges facing China, this fully revised and substantially expanded new edition is an essential read for any student of Chinese Studies.

This book is a grand review of the centurial development of rule of law in China. It covers the most important issues in this area and presents “political constitution,” a new interpretative framework that allows the Chinese experience of rule of law to be more fully and correctly expressed. It is especially useful to scholars involved in the study of modern China. The main chapters of this book include: The Constituent Movement in the Late Qing Dynasty; The Xinhai (1911) Revolution; Constitution-making at the Beginning of the Republic of China; The Great Revolution in the 1920s; The Rise of the Party State and its Transition; The Founding of 1949 New China and its Early Constitutional Development; and The Dualist System of Rule of Law in the Reforming Times.

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, there are only five socialist or communist countries left in the world – China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam – which constitute about one-quarter of the world’s population. Yet, there is little scholarship on their constitutions. These countries have seen varying socioeconomic changes in the decades since 1991, which have led in turn to constitutional changes. This book will investigate, from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, how and why the constitutional systems in these five countries have changed in the last three decades. The book then breaks the constitutional changes down into four questions: what are the substantive contents of constitutional change, what are the functions, what are the mechanisms, and what are the driving forces? These questions form a framework to process the changes the five countries have gone through, such as making new constitutions, amending current ones, introducing more rights, allowing citizens to engage in changes, enacting legislation, and defining the constitutional authority of the three state branches and their relationship with the Communist Party. While all five countries have adapted their constitutional systems, the degree, mechanisms, and influential factors are not identical and present considerable variations. This book examines and explores these differences and how they developed. Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist World offers a comprehensive and holistic view of an understudied and overlooked area of constitutional law, essential for anyone studying or working in law, politics, or policy.

The Handbook of Constitutional Law in Greater China surveys important issues of constitutional law in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. It synthesizes existing scholarship, debates, and views on important constitutional issues in the four jurisdictions. Written by a range of scholars, it contributes to both national and comparative scholarship on constitutional law in these jurisdictions. The book includes four parts: Part I: History. This part explores the constitutional movement of the Qing dynasty; constitutional projects in modern China; and aspects of the drafting and implementation history of the Hong Kong and Macau Basic Laws Part II: Structure. This part discusses the relationship between the party-state and the Chinese constitutional order; Chinese constitutionalism; constitutional aspects of city development under the SAR concept; constitutional review in Mainland China; a history of Taiwan’s ‘Council of Grand Justices’; and judicial review in both Hong Kong and Macau Part III: Rights, Society, and Economy. This part deals with Hong Kong’s National Security Law and its impact on the ‘one country, two systems model’; social movements and constitutionalism; LGBT rights advocacy; the integration of capitalist regions within socialist China; the constitutional relevance of labour reforms in Mainland China; healthcare rights in both the Mainland and the SARS; and foreign investment under Art. 18 of the PRC Constitution Part IV: Transnational Engagement. This part surveys comparative writings on China’s constitution; the influence of international human rights treaties on China’s constitutional order; the international dimension of Hong Kong’s constitutional order; and the changing role of the ‘overseas judges’ in Hong Kong Exploring both historical and cutting-edge constitutional issues, this reference book is important reading for law researchers, lawyers, graduate students, undergraduates, and practitioners in the field of constitutional law and politics in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The cultural fascination with and imagination of theater has long been overlooked as an important historical and literary context for reading Water Margin and Journey to the West. This study focuses on the concept of “the theatrical” to read those novels and their commentaries. Imbued with performances, playacting, spectacles, and spectatorship, the early modern theatrical novel borrowed heavily from theater to conflate the theatrical and the real, juggle theatrical roles, persons, and identities, and contest orthodoxies by challenging and appropriating sites of control and authority. This study showcases the theatrical novel’s unique position as a new form of literati self-representation in response to the destabilizing social and political forces of early modern China.

The fifteenth and final volume of the series The Making of Modern Freedom, this book explores a variety of issues surrounding questions of human rights and freedom in China. The chapters suggest very significant realms of freedom, with or without the protection of law, in the personal, social, and economic lives of people in China before the twentieth century. This was recognized, and partly codified, in the early twentieth century, when legal experts sought to establish a republic of laws and limits. The process of legal reform, however, would be placed firmly in the service of strengthening the post-imperial Chinese nation-state, culminating after 1949 in despotism unparalleled in Chinese history. Nevertheless, the last decades of the twentieth century and the first years of our own would witness a slow, steady, but unmistakable reassertion of realms of personal and communal autonomy that show, even in an era of strong states, at least the prospect of institutionalized freedoms.

This summer is an unusual one. The Russian-Ukrainian war shifted from a stalemate to a strategic counter-offensive in Ukraine. Against the backdrop of this huge geopolitical conflict, Taiwan Strait relations also became tense again with the visit of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. The clamor for military unification with Taiwan by force in mainland China has been overwhelming. Xi Jinping's call with Biden conveyed that this is not the time for a full-blown crisis to break out. When war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait will depend on the CCP's mindset. However, once the CCP regime falls into the hands of an emperor for life, the outbreak of war will be unpredictable. In this issue, several articles analyze Xi Jinping's mentality, psychology, and personality, which provide a glimpse of the "dictatorial factor" behind the Taiwan Strait crisis. Another article analyzing the 50-year history of U.S.-China relations can also help readers understand the direction of U.S.-China relations and the background of the Taiwan Strait crisis. With the globalized economy at a crossroads, the CCP has taken a big step backward from a semi-market economy to a state-planned economy and is facing a huge economic crisis in the financial, manufactory to real estate sectors. To divert an economic, social, and political crisis, CCP will avoid internal crises with war. This issue presents a scholar monography that gives us a glimpse into the social psychology of the general public in mainland China today, especially the underestimated dynamics of the little pinko groups that are driving China toward the mistakes of war. Meanwhile, the misunderstanding and misperception of the "Chinese revolution" not only camouflage the legitimacy of the CCP regime but also feed into a false "institutional confidence" for Xi Jinping， who boasts to point out the direction of global development.

This book on China's constitution and its tradition of constitutionalism is one of the first in the English language, and as such provides a much needed overview of China's constitutional history and present arrangements. The nine chapters are divided into three parts. The first part (Chapters 1 & 2) deals with China's constitutional history, its indigenous and Confucian antecedents, as well as the turbulent century which led up to the 1982 Constitution and the new order which this ushered in. The second chapter deals with the distinctive features of its current constitution. The second part (Chapters 3-6) introduces the institutional structure defined in the current constitution - the relationship between the Centre and the Regions, the role of the party and the role of the People's Congress, the meaning of the socialist rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary. The third part (Chapters 7-9) discusses the major developments in human rights and their deficiencies - the protection offered to life, liberty, property and equality, and at the same time the currently dormant areas of political and religious freedom. The book concludes with a chapter looking forward to the future of the People's Congress and Chinese constitutionalism. In sum, the book offers a readable account of the salient features of Chinese constitutional developments in all major areas.