If how a society decides its disputes is “a ritual of extreme social significance,” then China's thirty years of legal reform can inform our understanding of how the Chinese state relates to its society and how Chinese citizens relate to one another. Since 1978, China has embarked on legal reforms to promote law as a main mode of dispute resolution. But critics argue that China is establishing legal institutions more to promote economic development and coalesce state power and less to empower ordinary citizens. It is said that ordinary citizens shy away from formal legal mechanisms to resolve disputes because of an historical distrust of the law that is reinforced by recent experiences with Chinese courts. At the same time, the state's distrust of civil society institutions renders bottom-up initiatives unpromising.

This volume takes an on-the ground look at how civil disputes of ordinary citizens are being resolved in China today. In identifying what is going on at the ground level, this volume “disaggregates the Chinese state and society” to focus on the hows and whys – that is, the process of “law in action.”