In March 1995, The China Quarterly published a special issue devoted to developments in the Chinese legal system. That issue canvassed a wide range of subjects: the legislative process, the implementation of legislation via the interpretive practices of courts and administrative agencies as well as through the enforcement of civil judgements, the personnel staffing the system in the role of legal advisers, criminal law and human rights, the key area of foreign trade and investment law, and finally China's place and role in the international legal order.

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.

Donald Clarke's article provides a pretty full and accurate review of legislative activities in the course of China's economic developments since 1992. His perceptive analysis not only reflects the important achievements of economic legislation and its undeniable contribution to market developments in China, but also critically conceptualizes the many-featured legislative practice within an established theoretic framework with an emphasis on institutional capacity building.

China's recent revisions to its Company Law and Securities Law have brought new attention to issues of corporate governance in Chinese companies and financial markets. Among the chief criticisms of the earlier laws – in both their provisions and application – were the lack of protection for minority shareholders, the paucity of independent directors, the absence of transparency and inadequate financial disclosure. The acknowledged need for greater congruence between Chinese law and practice and that of countries with more developed capital markets led to the proposal of amendments to China's legislation during the first half of this decade. This article highlights several improvements resulting from the revisions as well as remaining weaknesses in the regulatory framework for corporate enterprises in China.

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.

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?

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.

This article extends the enduring debate over the balance of central versus local government control to China's cornerstone of state coercive control: the public security (civilian police) system. A recent series of studies argues that during the 1990s central authorities made terrific progress in regaining influence over local officials across a wide variety of issue-areas. This study, by contrast, argues that each policy sector in China has developed its own historical and institutional set of “lessons” that help structure power in that sector. Likewise, the particular issues in each policy sector create unique challenges for “principals” trying to monitor their “agents.” Regarding internal security, the historical lessons the Party has derived from past security crises combine with the uniquely difficult challenges of monitoring police activities to create a system in which local Party and government officials have tremendous power over policing. The many institutions intended to help central authorities control, oversee and monitor local policing actually provide weak control and oversight. These obstacles to central leadership create tremendous additional challenges to building rule by law in China.

Among Chinese political scientists and legal scholars, indeed within the Chinese academic world as a whole, research into the police is to a great degree marginalized. As the media have become more active, and in particular as internet media have arisen, it has become easier for some incidents of police infringements of human rights to attract nationwide attention. But there has been very little discussion of the relationship between these incidents and the police management system, or the division of police management power between the central and local governments and its ultimate influence on the construction of society in China under the rule of law.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.