Although scholarship on Chinese law and legal history has been growing, so far no substantive study has been done (in the English language at least) on the judicial reform during the Republican period.1 Without an adequate accounting for this historical experience it is not possible to understand fully the political democratization on Taiwan in recent decades, nor the Communist judicial practices during the Maoist era and the possible direction of the post-Mao reform in the judicial field. As part of a larger study that aims to contribute to this important subject, this article focuses on how the governments of Republican China treated the principle of judicial independence (sifa dull) and examines how judicial independence fared in practice.

Rights and interests, quanyi, are superseding class as the conceptual axis of Chinese law and jurisprudence. Recent legislation highlighting this new social and legal theory has stipulated new law on womens and childrens rights and interests. It has also endorsed an updated conception of the relation between state and society, by which the state is formally required both to provide for newly stipulated civil law protection of rights and interests and to perfect a system of social protection, shehui baozhang zhidu. The latter is to serve as a self–conscious guarantee of the practical enjoyment of rights and interests through broadly based education and social activism. If the leadership of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has formally committed itself to the development and protection of such rights, it remains to be seen how this commitment can be squared with the regimes refurbished mass line focus on comprehensive social control.1

Dramatic social and economic change taking place in the Zhujiang Delta region has been a subject of extensive documentation. Much has been written on the growth and restructuring of the deltas regional economy, on its intensified social and economic linkages with Hong Kong and the outside world, and on its changing geographic patterns of urbanization and regional development. While the emergence of the Zhujiang Delta as one of the most dynamic economic regions has received wide recognition from scholars and the general public, the operating mechanism of economic and spatial transformation at the local level remains poorly understood. How has a rural economy under socialism been transformed after the intrusion of free market forces? What role is played by the state, the collective economy and the private sector in this process of transformation? Is the transformation process facilitated by the growtrT of market farming or rural industrial development? How has change in the political economy affected migration, land use and the natural environment? These questions are all open to further investigation.

Reform has posed a serious contradiction for environmental protection efforts in China. On the one hand, the first decade of reform (1979–89) ushered in a vast expansion of environmental protection institutions, laws and policies, a process which in certain respects continues to this day. On the other hand, the reforms also welcomed the rapid and often unrestrained growth that is responsible for the dramatic erosion of the quality of Chinas environment over the past two decades. The central governments professed concern for the environment and the national measures taken to protect it appeared, by the end of the 1980s, to have slowly caused some improvements in the enforcement of environmental policy. But by the mid–1990s, a renewed burst of economic activity following Deng Xiaopings 1992 Shenzhen trip had combined with another round of administrative reforms in early 1994 to set back these efforts.

Using such conventional yardsticks as economic growth, the performance of the Chinese economy in the post–Mao era is nothing short of spectacular. However, with the unfolding of events in the reform era, some commentators have struck a discordant note amidst a chorus of praise. They have called into question the success of China if development is seen as the enhancement of the quality of life through longer lives and better education.1 In the realm of education, reports of such problems as child labour, falling school enrolment, rising drop–out rates and widening regional as well as rural–urban disparities have captured the attention of policy–makers and scholars in China and abroad.

The unprecedented scale of permanent and temporary migration in China today, with estimates at any one time amounting to close to 120 million persons, is simultaneously a spontaneous response to or consequence of economic reform and increasingly a de facto component of government policy. Given the dimensions of this population movement and its socio–economic and political significance it is not surprising that migration in China has become an important item for research both within and outside China. This research is usually conducted at the macro–level and made up of a number of components, including investigations of the origins, characteristics, motivation and welfare of migrants; the factors motivating migrants outwards; the factors pulling migrants towards their destinations; and the repercussions of migration for host populations, social stability and social order..

A number of recent publications have given detailed accounts of the gulag system in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), filling an important gap in the available literature. Comprehensive descriptions of the huge prison and labour camp network, which has administered the lives of 20 to 30 million convicts since 1949, are generally based either on the analysis of official documents, in particular notices and regulations,1 or on information gathered from former prisoners.2 The brutal treatment of political prisoners in the regimes penal institutions, the gradual destruc– tion of human beings in labour camps, and the widespread use of torture and physical violence in thought reform are some of the most disturbing aspects of a gulag system that have been vividly evoked in many autobiographies.3 Beyond these general descriptions, however, virtually f nothing is known about the number of camps, the scope of labour reform or even the daily lives of common prisoners. The major difficulty encountered in research on the gulag system is the lack of more substantial empirical evidence, as internal documents formulated by prison administrations, public security bureaus or other security departments are f difficult to find. Indeed, anyone found guilty of leaking special classified documents will be convicted of a counter–revolutionary crime.

The basic character of crime in contemporary China by the Ministry of Public Security Research Unit Number Five1 offers what must be the most comprehensive picture to date of crime in contemporary China. Written by the unit in charge of criminal investigation this authoritative article offers figures and analysis rarely seen outside the Ministry. Almost by definition it was never meant for open publication. It was designed for Chinese specialists within the Ministry to help them come to terms with, and to gain some understanding of, the nature of crime in the China of economic reform. The overall volume from which this article comes was one of three internally published by the Ministry between 1989 and 1993. The first two volumes are collections of articles from throughout the country, and the final volume (published in 1993) was a summary of major criminal trends and an update on the situation. The decision to publish these books followed a specialist conference convened by the Ministry in 1989 and held in Hebei for specialists in the area. The significance of the series is testified by the fact that the then Deputy Minister of Public Security, Yu Lie, was made editor-in-chief of the whole series.