Development of a New Legal System in the People s Republic of China
| Author | Volker Behr |
| Position | Director, Institute for European Legal Systems, University of Augsberg |
| Pages | 1161-1180 |
Director, Institute for European Legal Systems, University of Augsberg.
Law making in a global world can be examined and discussed from many different positions. One of the most fascinating perspectives is examining the formation of a totally new legal system in a country actually undergoing dramatic economic, sociological, and cultural changes. This is what is happening in the People's Republic of China. Modern development of the legal system started only about thirty years ago. Due to the endeavors of the People's Republic of China to accede to the World Trade Organization, this development was rapidly accelerating at the time I first went to the country about ten years ago. During the last ten years I could follow this development almost every year while teaching Chinese law to Chinese students in Beijing and cooperating with Chinese colleagues in the law making process.
After what is called the Cultural Revolution in the years 1966 to 1976, the economic system within the People's Republic of China was modified. The communist planned economy was replaced by a socialist market economy, which gradually allowed, protected, and finally encouraged private economies. At the same time, China opened itself to international trade. As a result of these changes, China's economy is currently developing at high speed, and trade with China, as well as investment in China, has increased dramatically and continues to do so. Sino-foreign trade has crossed the line of $1 trillion per year, while foreign investment in China now is about $50 billion per year. This economic development demanded an adequate legal system.
The new legal system had to be developed practically from nothing, the Cultural Revolution having left a legal vacuum. The new system had to cover all areas of law related to economics, but it was not restricted to such law.
This article does not intend to give an introduction to modern Chinese law,1 nor does it intend to discuss at length the content of that law. Instead, it will try to discover what we can learn from the Page 1162 development in the People's Republic of China with respect to the problem of law making in a global world. To this end, Part II will summarize the historic development of the law in China up to the Cultural Revolution, while Part III will bring us up to the present day, focusing on the last thirty years. Part IV will evaluate this development as it pertains to law making in a global world. Finally, Part V will briefly summarize the results.
Traditional Chinese law as in force and practiced in the period of the Chinese Empire up to the end of the nineteenth century can be classified as the heart of one of the big families of law, like the Anglo-American common law, the Continental European Germano-Roman civil law, and Islamic law. Its influence reached all over East and Southeast Asia. This law was based on a traditional natural economy and was fostered by Confucian culture; it was little qualified to cope with the economic development of the nineteenth century and could not survive when pounded by modern Western capitalist civilization.
In order to meet the requirements of international developments and to cope with the development of the modern national economy, the Qing Dynasty at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century tried to reform its legal system. During this time Continental European law heavily influenced the modernization of the Chinese legal system. Notably, German law was taken as paradigm in the planned development of a modern Chinese civil code, the German Civil Code at that time being the most recent civil code and accessible via Japan and Korea. But large-scale political changes were an obstacle to bring this development to an end. The last emperor, P'u Yi, resigned in 1912, a minor at the time, and the Chinese Empire entered into a long period of revolution and civil war.
Throughout roughly the first half of the twentieth century, the political system remained fragile and unstable. The Qing Dynasty Page 1163 was followed by a long period of civil wars, with warlords battling and finally being defeated by the Kuomintang. In the Northern Territories, the Kuomintang established a new government that tried to preserve the old legal system2 and to modernize it, e.g., by introducing a new civil code relying on German, Swiss, and Japanese codes. But again this development was blocked by civil wars. Only in 1949 could China again attempt to establish a legal system.
On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. The new political system based on Marxist- Leninist ideas was incompatible with the old legal system, and the Central Committee of the Communist Party declared the old National Codes to be abolished.3 The new legal system, in keeping with the political development, relied heavily on the communist Soviet Russian legal system. Instead of a market economy and the associated legal mechanics, a planned economy became the leading economic principle.4 The economic system was governed by plans and administrative orders,5 so there was little need for a body of law to regulate a market economy. However, this development phase was soon broken again by political changes. The so-called Cultural Revolution ground the administration of justice to a halt.
Struggle for power within the Communist Party of China led to what is called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.6 In August of 1966, Mao Zedong, at a Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, called for Red Guards to challenge Party officials for their lack of revolutionary zeal. During the period from 1966 to 1976,7 existing law was abrogated Page 1164 or suspended,8 and law reform was abandoned. To give but some examples: Contracts were considered to be symbols of a capitalistic system; hence, the contract system was abolished. For about twenty years no contract law was enacted, nor was contract law practiced in the courts.9 Since 1950 Socialist China had tried to develop a criminal code. In the course of time, thirty-three drafts of such a code had been completed,10 but it was only in 1980, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, that the completed code was finally enacted.
It was then about exactly thirty years ago that China again attempted-for the fourth time in the twentieth century-to develop a new legal system. China's economy, which had declined significantly due to the disorder of the Cultural Revolution, was changed from a pure socialist planned economy towards a mixture of a planned economy and what is called a socialist market economy. And China tried to become a partner in global economy and trade. This development was initiated in the Third Session of the XIth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in December 1978, where socialist modernization was declared to be a major goal and where individual activities were accepted to be part of that development.11
The significance of market economies was set in stone by anchoring this principle in the Chinese Constitution. Article 15 of the 1982 Constitution still emphasized a planned economy as the basis of socialist public ownership.12 However, Article 11 already cautiously accepted market economies as a supplement to a Page 1165 planned economy.13 Similarly, foreign investment was permitted.
An evolving domestic market based on any type of market economy depends on a reliable and workable legal framework. Similarly, international business and investment in foreign countries rely on a reliable legal framework. Both developments ask for legal certainty and for predictability of legal decisions. Hence, the principle of legal certainty and the development of legal order became predominant political goals. They were to be achieved in a three-step approach, the different steps somewhat overlapping.
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