Bird in a Cage: Chinese Law Reform after Twenty Years (original) (raw)

Cage for the Birds: On the Social Transformation of Chinese Law, 1999-2019

China Law and Society Review, 2020

In his book on legal reform in China after Mao, Stanley B. Lubman adopted the metaphor “bird in a cage” to describe the status of Chinese law at the turn of the twenty-first century. This article offers some general reflections on the social transformation of Chinese law since 1999, with the objective of explaining (1) how the legal bird has become a cage, and (2) how this new legal cage has been used to trap birds in Chinese society. It first traces the transformation of the legal bird into a cage in China’s reform era and then tells the stories of four species of birds currently confined in the legal cage, namely, hawks (state officials), crows (rights activists), sparrows (netizens), and ostriches (ordinary citizens). Laws related to the four species are concerned with combating corruption, political stability, internet control, and everyday life, respectively. By focusing on the four species of birds in the legal cage, this article offers a fresh understanding of how law interacts with various individuals and social groups in Chinese society and a sociolegal explanation of the social transformation of China’s legal system from 1999 to 2019.

JURA 2013/2. 142 Monika Zalewska: A bird in a Cage: Chinese Constitutional Rules and Law Reform

In 1918 Oswald Spengler in Decline of the West pre-dicted that western civilization will lose its privileged status. Regarding that, the beginning of XX century was a period of unquestioned domination of our region, this thesis could seem to be unlikely to come true, although after world War I there was not much optimism in Europe. Right now, one hundred years later, we are witnessing how this prophecy comes true. Western civilization loses its dominant posi-tion in favor of China. In this context everyone is aware of the importance of the question about the shape of China today and its prospects in the future. Obviously, the answer must be very complex and it is impossible to provide it in a short paper, so I will focus on the legal aspect, especially regarding Constitutional rules. The aim of this paper is not to simply describe all constitutional regulations of the People's Republic of China (the PRC), but to provide profound understanding how Chinese legal system works. To a...

Chinese Legal Reforms: Transformations in a Decade

2024

This book explains the details and underlying thinking of many major reforms to Chinese law and legal practice that have taken place since 2013. It draws widely on laws and regulations, policies, cases, official statistics as well as the latest Chinese and foreign literature. The informed analysis answers intriguing questions such as why China runs the world’s largest database of court judgments without recognising any precedent, or why the number of judges was cut by 40% despite a more than doubled caseload. Ultimately it offers a new approach on how to understand Chinese law and legal reforms in the contemporary world.

New Developments in Law in the People's Republic of China

Northwestern Journal of International Law Business, 1979

Recently, Chinese leaders have begun to promote the development of legal standards andformal legal institutions for China. In this article, Mr. Lubman explores the background and current status of the role of law in China and assesses its relationsho to China's economic development, domestic politics, and international economic relations. Mr. Lubman suggests that students of Chinese law must create new theoreticalperspectives to study the new developments.

Studying Contemporary Chinese Law: Limits, Possibilities and Strategy

The American Journal of Comparative Law, 1991

Johnson & Bridges, San Francisco. This article grew out of a paper originally presented at a conference on American Studies of China organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Wye Plantation in 1988. The author is grateful for support provided by the Law Schools of Harvard and Stanford, where he revised the article while in residence as Visiting Professor in the spring semesters of 1989 and 1990, respectively, and by the law firm of Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges. Judith M. Lubman, William P. Alford and James V. Feinerman were kind enough to read and comment on earlier drafts. 5. Without pretending to completeness, I cite the following alumni of the Harvard East Asian Legal Studies Program, who have written widely and promoted the study of Chinese law as law teachers or practitioners: R. Randle Edwards, currently teaching Chinese law at Columbia Law School; William P. Alford, who after teaching Chinese law at UCLA returned to Harvard in 1989 (see n. 42 infra); James V. Feinerman, currently teaching Chinese law at Georgetown Law School; Victor H. Li, who taught Chinese law at Stanford before becoming President of the East