Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-2jptb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-20T20:11:51.794Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Legalizing the Local State: Administrative “Legality” at China's Grassroots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

By
Douglas B. Grob
Edited by
Margaret Y. K. Woo  and
Mary E. Gallagher
Douglas B. Grob
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Margaret Y. K. Woo
Affiliation:
Northeastern University, Boston
Mary E. Gallagher
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Get access

Summary

Assessing the development of law in China is a challenging proposition by any standard. One provincial government official I interviewed described current conditions with uncommon eloquence:

Legal reform in the context of China's economic reform is an “overlay” (fugaimiande). The challenge we face is that the overlay contains many bare patches (haiyou kongbai dian). Legal development continues to expand the size and quality of that overlay. But so long as economic development moves faster than legal development, those bare patches only increase in size, number, or both. Economic development moves at the speed of money; legal development moves at the speed of changing minds.

He continued:

The old system was one of administration according to policy, documents, and leaders (yi zhengce xingzheng; yi wenjian xingzheng; yi lingdao xingzheng). In the new system people are supposed to think in terms of administration according to law (yi fa xingzheng). That is what we strive for. But peasants have changed their minds more quickly than officials have changed their ways. Both are changing, but the pace is different.

To be sure, legal development does involve changing minds, and it does demand adjustment and adaptation both by officials and by citizens. Adaptation and adjustment are pressing concerns. But they are not the only, or necessarily even the most important reasons why legal development has not proceeded in the same way or at the same pace across China, up and down the Chinese administrative hierarchy or across the state-society divide.

Type
Chapter
Information
Chinese Justice
Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China
 , pp. 91 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Wang, Xixin, “Rule of Rules: An Inquiry into Administrative Rules in China's Rule of Law Context.” In The Rule of Law: Perspectives from the Pacific Rim (Washington, D.C.: Mansfield Foundation, 2000)Google Scholar
Corne, Peter Howard, “Creation and Application of Law in the PRC,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 50, no. 2 (2002): 369–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peerenboom, Randall, China's Long March toward Rule of Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro, Martin, Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar
Nonet, Philippe and Selznick, Philip, Law and Society in Transition: Toward Responsive Law (New York: Harper & Row, 1978)Google Scholar
Posner, Richard, “Creating a Legal Framework for Economic Development,” World Bank Research Observer 13, no. 1 (1998): 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubman, Stanley B., Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2000)Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Tom, Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
,State Council Implementation Outline for the Comprehensive Promotion of Administration According to Law (Guowuyuan quanmian tuijin yifa xingzheng shishi gangyao), 22 March 2004
Mertha, Andrew, “‘Policy Enforcement Markets’: How Bureaucratic Redundancy Contributes to Effective IPR Policy Implementation in China,” Comparative Politics 38, no. 3 (2006): 295–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kui, Shen, “Is it the Beginning of the Era of the Rule of the Constitution? Reinterpreting China's ‘First Constitutional Case,’” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 12, no. 1 (2003): 199–231.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, Tom, Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Case (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanhua, Zhou, Trend Toward the Judiciary-Oriented Reform of Administrative Reconsideration (Xingzheng fuyi sifa hua: lilun, shizhan yu gaige) (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×