Among the many extraordinary developments attendant to China's transition from the Maoist era, one of the most significant - both for China and the rest of the world - has been the growing participation of the f People's Republic of China (PRC) in the global community. Emerging from an isolation which was by turns self-imposed and externally enforced, the PRC has rapidly embraced a wide range of international T relations, including membership of most international organizations, in [ stark contrast to its situation before the late 1970s. For many reasons, this increasing involvement with other nations has necessitated far greater f attention to international law than was common during the Maoist period. At the level of public international law, many more treaties have f been concluded; with respect to international business, a burgeoning sector of China's domestic economy now depends on long-term foreign j investment fostered by protective regulations. Far-flung foreign trade and Chinese investments abroad have even forced the PRC government to f litigate actively as a defendant in foreign courts, a prospect almost unimaginable 20 years ago.

When judgements are not executed, the law is worth nothing. – “The masses”

It is a staple of Chinese legal literature that the judgments of Chinese courts in civil and economic cases are plagued by a worryingly low execution rate. This perception should be taken seriously. When the President of the Supreme People's Court devotes significant space to it in his report to the National People's Congress, as did Zheng Tianxiang in 1988 and Ren Jianxin in subsequent reports, clearly something interesting is going on. Yet it would be a mistake to accept all reports at face value. A critical examination of the claims and the evidence can yield a richer picture of reality than has been presented by the literature so far.

The issue of whether court judgments can be enforced is important for a number of reasons, among which is its bearing on the relationship between the legal system and the economic system. Laws, courts and court judgments are part of the institutional framework within which economic reform is being carried out in China. Obviously, the rules of the game have to change. But the move from a hierarchically administered economy to a primarily market economy means more than just changing the content of the rules. It implies a whole new way of rule-making and rule-enforcing.

This article explores one particular way of making the rules mean something: the enforcement of a court decision that the implementation of a particular rule requires the performance of a particular act - typically, the delivery of money or goods.

The institutions of criminal law and their relation to human rights in the People's Republic of China are worth studying for a number of reasons. First, it is in the realm of criminal law and human rights discourse that much of the Chinese conception of law itself is worked out. Secondly, criminal law in China, like criminal law anywhere, carries with it a theory of social order and disorder that is worth looking at for its own sake. One of the challenges facing Chinese criminal law today is that of rejustifying itself in the face of the enormous social changes that have taken place since the beginning of economic reform and China's opening to the outside world in the late 1970s. Thirdly, as long as human rights remain a matter of international concern, one cannot ignore the institutions of punishment that govern one-fifth of the world's population. This article gives an overview of issues of criminal law and human rights as they affect Chinese society today.