Since the early 1990s, China has come a long way in legislating the foundational rules for its reformed economy. Virtually all of the important areas – contracts, business organizations, securities, bankruptcy and secured transactions, to name a few – are now covered by national legislation as well as lower-level regulations. Yet an important feature of a legal structure suited to a market economy is missing: the ability of the system to generate from below solutions to problems not adequately dealt with by existing legislation. The top-down model that has dominated Chinese law reform efforts to date can only do so much. What is needed now is a more welcoming attitude to market-generated solutions to the gaps and other problems that will invariably exist in legislation. The state's distrust of civil-society institutions and other bottom-up initiatives suggests, however, that this different approach will not come easily.

Benjamin Liebman has written a good article on a difficult subject. I have only a few comments, divided into three parts. In the first two parts, I consider Liebman's approach to such a historically complicated matter. I think it is appropriate to deal with it by focusing on the central question of whether the role of the courts in China's political system has changed as a result of reform; after an initial discussion, I show that Liebman has actually engaged in a political system analysis to reply to that central question. The third part presents my initial ideas about three different possible tests for evaluating judicial reform. Using these tests, I will look at the question of the sense in which reform could be regarded as “restricted,” as Liebman has suggested.

China's participation in the international legal system has long been a topic of academic inquiry both inside and outside China, and has produced a rich literature reflecting mainly two concerns. First, is China a help or a hindrance to the development of the international legal system? If China is a help, what impact has China made upon the contemporary international legal system and what can China contribute to its further development? Secondly, what impact has the international legal system in which China has participated had on China? In recent years, the context in which these questions are framed has changed greatly. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, China was seen as a potential rebel against the prevailing international legal system. Today, China is depicted, at least in the mind of US decision-makers, as a stakeholder of the world order.

The concept of corporate governance was not discussed in Chinese academic literature until the year when the first Company Law of the People's Republic was enacted. From scholarship to practice, corporate governance saw great progress throughout the following decade.

This article assesses the impact of China's accession to the World Trade Organization on its foreign trade and investment regime. While the government had begun liberalizing the Chinese economy long before joining the WTO, the accession induced regulatory, institutional and normative changes that have transformed the landscape of trade and investment in China. The profound impact of the WTO stems directly from the extensive commercial and rule commitments China undertook in its accession. Focusing on the most significant of these commitments, the article examines their implications for Chinese constitutional law and their effect on the regulation of foreign trade, foreign investment, intellectual property rights and domestic governance. Additionally, it looks at the impact of WTO disputes on Chinese law and practice. It concludes that China's accession has made its foreign trade and investment regime far more liberalized and less opaque than a decade ago. More importantly, the accession has institutionalized the process of China's domestic reform externally through the force of WTO obligations. Although much uncertainty remains concerning the future direction of government policies, WTO membership ensures that the course of China's economic development will be charted within the disciplines of the WTO system.

During the past decade, the Chinese government has pursued greater engagement with a range of international legal regimes. China's expanded participation in international regimes for trade and human rights, for example, can provide deeper understanding of the factors influencing China's international behaviour. Building upon scholarly perspectives about institutional compliance with treaty texts and the influence of local conditions on China's policies and practice, this article examines China's participation in international legal regimes for trade and human rights in light of dynamics of normative engagement and the paradigm of selective adaptation. Normative tensions help explain China's policies and practices on compliance with the WTO trade regime, while the imperative of normative engagement helps explain much about China's international human rights diplomacy.

China's courts have in recent years engaged in significant reforms designed to raise the quality of their work. Yet such top-down reforms have been largely technical and are not designed to alter courts' power. Courts have also encountered new challenges, including rising populist pressures, which may undermine their authority. The most important changes in China's courts have come from the ground up: local courts have engaged in significant innovation, and horizontal interaction among judges is facilitating the development of professional identity. Recent developments have largely avoided two central questions facing China's courts: why have courts been permitted to develop even limited new roles, and what additional roles, if any, may they play within the Chinese political system?

This article considers the principal changes in family law in the People's Republic of China during the post-Deng period. The developments that have occurred during the period of review have been notable for their pace and their contribution to a growing legal sophistication in China's corpus of family law. They expand on a series of major reforms in family law documented in my earlier China Quarterly article. Overall, it is in the area of divorce that the most dramatic changes have taken place in family law over the past decade.

Michael Palmer's article examines the development of three important aspects in Chinese family law: divorce, adoption and family planning. It is a commendable effort to approach Chinese family law broadly in order to bring family planning policy within its study. There remains a glaring gap in Chinese legal scholarship between the study of family law and the study of population. The disciplines are divided into two camps with little cross-fertilization. Palmer's article clearly demonstrates the importance and necessity of including family planning within the study of family law. The article is also a laudable attempt to examine the dynamic interaction between family law and socioeconomic changes.

In her article, Julia Ya Qin draws conclusions from the accession of China to the WTO which reflects the effects of WTO obligations on China's constitutional law, the development of foreign trade law, the foreign investment regime, intellectual property rights protections and general rule-of-law conditions. With respect to foreign trade law, the foreign investment regime and intellectual property rights protections, it is not difficult to observe the legal consequences the accession has brought and will bring to China. However, Qin's article goes beyond these general observations and provides profound insights on significant effects of the WTO obligations on China's economic reforms as well as rule of law processes. This essay comments on arguments she has presented on these issues.