In Between – Gender, Solidarity and Legality? Part II (of II): China’s Legal System (original) (raw)

Abstract

of Law, where she teaches Chinese Law, Comparative Law, and Law and Society in Asia. In Part I of this two-part analysis, Hanne Petersen discussed similarities between and social tensions in the EU and China, leading to a development of a neo-Confucian ideology and the 'Harmonious Society' in China. In the EU, solidarity was similarly invoked as a means to minimize said tensions. In Part II, Simona Novaretti investigates the way in which a stronger emphasis on traditional Chinese values has influenced the interpretation given to the concepts of solidarity and gender in China, and how this interpretation is reflected in the most recent Chinese legislation. Since the beginning of the 21 st Century, the increasing "contradictions among the people" caused by China's tremendous economic development, forced the Communist Party of China (CPC) to rethink the Country's development pattern, setting up a more sustainable, coordinated, and inclusive model of growth, capable of building a "moderately prosperous society". • Xi Jinping's call to "achieve the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" reflects PRC leaders' will to improve the international image of China, on the one hand, and to re-introduce traditional moral concepts to rebuild the social cohesion apparently lost with the reforms through a "Confucianization of the Law", on the other. • The legal re-elaboration and actualization of the traditional concepts of filial piety, benevolence and harmony may prove crucial in realizing some parts of the social dimension of sustainable development, namely intergenerational and intra-generational equity. • Not all the basic principles of traditional Chinese thought are equally useful to achieve the commitments of sustainable development assumed by PRC at international level. • References to "traditional family values" embodied in recent PRC's legal provisions seem to jeopardize the possibility of the PRC achieving the inter-gender equity goal, provided for in the "2030 Agenda" on sustainable development by the UN in September 2015.

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