MIDTERM (Lec 1-6)

Question 1

Why study law? (2)

Answer 1

1. It is needed to effectively understand a society
2. Law and enforcement reflect political and socio-economic situations of societies

Question 2

Why do we need law in society? (3)

Answer 2

1. Maintaining social order and protecting the legitimate rights of social actors
2. Providing stability and predictability (e.g. so businesses make long-term investments)
3. Mediating and resolving social disputes/law and conflict resolution (in the shadow of the law). This can go through informal channels

Question 3

What are informal channels?

Answer 3

Informal channels of resolving conflicts among citizens or social actors are normally based on their voluntary cooperation or negotiation. Two situations in which informal channels are used:
1. When state power is absent
2. When the people are reluctant to resort to formal channels

Question 4

Why use informal channels?

Answer 4

1. Cheap and effective
2. In small communities, when the state is absent

Question 5

Limitations of informal mechanisms or norms (3)

Answer 5

1. it is context-specific (e.g. only works in small communities, not to strangers)
2. Less costly, but not binding
3. It may not be reasonable to others

Question 6

Features of formal channels (4)

Answer 6

1. Stable, clear and legitimate
2. Independent legal institutions staffed with capable and incorrupt aents are trained, disciplined and integrity
3. The political system that limits the power of both public and private actors (checks and balances)
4. Political and social culture conductive to fair law enforcement.

Question 7

Limitations of formal legal systems (5)

Answer 7

1. Requires knowlegde
2. Requires money
3. Requires time
4. It can be too rigid (e.g. ATM)
5. It can be too relaxed (people can continue committing small crimes)

Question 8

Confucian ideology and law in China (4)

Answer 8

1. It emphasizes the cultivation of moral goodness
   2, The emergence of the formally-enacted law was an indication of moral decline
2. Disputes mean a disturbance of social and the natural order, and should be avoided if possible
3. Reconciliation (i.e., compromise) takes precedence over direct confrontation (i.e., in the court)
   So, mediation is better then court.

Question 9

Why is going to court a taboo? (3)

Answer 9

1. The undertaker (who prepares the dead)
2. Pawnshop (indicative of debt)
3. Taking to the court (loss of face because you were not respected by the offending party)

Question 10

What was the government’s attitude towards lawsuits?

Answer 10

Negative, because it was too costly. It made the lawsuits as bad as possible, do people would fear the court and law and prefer to settle things in informal ways

Question 11

In what ways were courts humiliating? (3)

Answer 11

1. Litigants had to kneel
2. Torture was used to elicit evidence of confession of guilt
3. Someone had to be responsible (accused or accuser)

Question 12

What is an unacceptable crime in China?

Answer 12

Betrayal and murdering your parents. This is because of Confucian values. This shows how this ideology also influences law

Question 13

Other reasons against formal punishment (5)

Answer 13

1. Jails were horrible
2. Corruption
3. Court is like a tiger’s mouth
4. No transparency
5. Law is nothing but trouble

Question 14

Dispute mediation institutions (4)

Answer 14

1. Gentry (had property, conformity with code of conduct, educated, mediatos).
2. Village leaders
3. Families and clans (face issue prevented them from using lawsuits)
4. Guilds (regulated business activities and mediated conflicts)

Question 15

What about Chinese society after 1949?

Answer 15

Socialist China was established in 1949, after which the party-state controlled the society. After 1958, rural people were formed into rural collectives. By the late 1950s, urban people were formed into work units

Question 16

Social arrangements in 1950s China (3)

Answer 16

1. Public ownership and limited mobility
2. Rationing system
3. Party’s dominance in the political system

Question 17

Rural Commune System (1958-1984)

Answer 17

In the early 1950s, land was initially distributed to individual peasant households. From 1958, peasants were organized into the commune system. Their land was turned in to the collective.
The collectivization of the agricultural production in rural areas:
Structure:
* Production team: consisting of a number of peasant households
* Brigade: consisting of a number of production teams
* Commune: consisting of a number of brigades

Question 18

What are the political implications of collectivization? (4)

Answer 18

1. The rights of peasants as a collective were not protected
2. Peasants lost their freedom of mobility
3. The source of the divide between the urban and rural areas emerged.
4. A system of low efficiency emerged.

Implications of rural collective for dispute resolution: In rural collective period (until the early 1980s), civil disputes were mostly addressed within the village community, often with the intervention of village cadres and/or senior villagers.

Question 19

The work-unit system in urban China: nationalization of property

Answer 19

• An overwhelming majority of the urban population worked in the work units in the public sector
• Welfare benefits, such as housing and pension, were provided by the work units (e.g., factories, government agencies, schools)
• Personnel-file system, together with the rationing system, controlled employees (e.g., getting married needed documents provided by the work unit).

Question 20

Implications of the work-unit system (2)

Answer 20

1. Conflict between individuals across work units were not many as they did not interat with each other
2. Conflicts within a work unit were mostly addressed within the work unit by the leaders

Question 21

What formal legal institutions were established during the 1950s? (3)

Answer 21

1. Courts
2. Procuratorate (represents the government)
3. Public Security Bureau

Question 22

What was the party-state’s attitude towards law?

Answer 22

• Highly instrumental and highly political
• Laws and legal institutions were used to achieve political and economic goals, such as land reform and nationalization of urban economies (e.g., factories)
• In the early 1950s, government agencies instead of the courts played a more important role in addressing criminal activities. This approach seemed to be rather effective in dealing with certain issues like drugs and prostitution.

Question 23

What is the direct impact of the Cultural Revolution on politics and law?

Answer 23

• About 100 million people in China were negatively affected by this political movement. 34,000 officials, including the president of the country, were executed. The whole country was in a chaos for 10 years.
• Cultural revolution is an important reason for the Chinese party-state to strengthen the rule of law.

Question 24

Mao’s political movement in 1966

Answer 24

• Laws that protected individuals’ rights were largely ignored (e.g., some people were frequently beaten)
• The major criterion used to judge a person was his or her class background and political attitude, which was rather subjective. Anti-revolution or anti-Mao could be a crime leading to death penalty
• Legal procedures were largely ignored, and people could be executed without court trials
• Government agencies, including the legal departments, were sometimes paralyzed (destroying the courts, procuracies, and the public security bureaus).

During the Cultural Revolution, court rulings were politicized, and about 64 percent of the political cases were mistakenly judged.

From 1978 to 1981, the Supreme Court reviewed 1.2 million criminal cases judged during the Cultural Revolution and corrected the rulings of one-fourth of them, affecting 326,000 people.

Question 25

Issues faced by the Communist Party and the government after the Cultural Revolution (3)

Answer 25

1. Mistreated people in the movements (they corrected a lot of cases)
2. Collapsed economy (it became a priority to fix this)
3. Paralyzed institutions

Question 26

The rise of Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997)

Answer 26

• After 1978, Deng Xiaoping began to emerge as the most powerful figure in China.
• He began the process of reform and openness in China in the late 1970s
• He visited the US in 1979
• In 1969-1973, Deng, his mother, and his wife were sent to Jiangxi. His son jumped out of the building in 1968, paralyzed.

Question 27

Economic developments with Deng Xiaoping (2)

Answer 27

• Recruit young cadres
• Reform and openess

Question 28

Legal institution building: Addressing problems in Cultural Revolution

Answer 28

Economic development
* From the late 1970s, most plans for industrial products (e.g., their output and prices) were abolished
* The rise of non-state economy: from 1978 to 1997, the proportion of the state economy in the total GDP decreased from 77.6 percent to 26.5 percent. Meanwhile, the proportion of the private economy increased from 0.2 percent to 32.9 percent.
* Openness: export increased, FDI (foreign direct investment) increased, more recent, the WTO (2001).

Social changes
* The demise of the commune system
* The rise of private economy and the weakening of the work-unit system (the availability of jobs in the private sector and reform of public enterprises).

As a result, the work-unit system is not longer sufficient to solve disputes among social actors.

There was also a rise of awareness of rights (suing the government before a law was made).

There came new measures to strengthen the legal system: new laws. In 1979, the National People’s Congress passed seven law at one time. It is an important organ responsible for lawmaking in China.

Question 29

Peng Zhen in NPC (1979-1987)

Answer 29

1. People’s congress:
   * The Election of Law Deputies of the People’s Congresses (selection of deputies)
   * The Organization Law of Local People’s Congresses and Local Governments (the role of the people’s congress)
2. Criminal issues
   * The Criminal Law: the legal punishment in light of a conduct
   * The Criminal Procedure Law: how to proceed of process a case, regulating the procedures used by the legal departments, including the court
3. Legal institutions
   * The Organization Law of the People’s Congress
   * The Organization Law of the People’s Procuracy
4. Economic
   * The Sino-Foreign Joint Ventures Law
   * Attract foreign investment, so China joined WTO in 2001

Question 30

How did CCP rule the country without formal laws?

Answer 30

It used regulations. The Criminal Law was not formally enacted until 1979. Before that, the government used directives to guide the punishment of criminals (e.g., drug dealers in the 1950s).
After 1949, the Chinese government made a series of directives and regulations: e.g.,
Rule by directive:
* 1950: prohibition on the use of opium prohibition on the export of historical relics
* 1951: prohibition on fake currency
Anti-revolution behavior
* 1952: corruption

These regulations became the base for the Criminal law:
1. In 1950, a committee began the drafting of the criminal law
2. In 1954-1957, 22 versions were completed, but was then stopped.
3. 1962: resumed
4. 1963, the 33rd version was completed.
5. The Cultural Revolution started and the drafting was stopped again.

Question 31

Law developments (4)

Answer 31

1. From 1978 to 1998, the National People’s Congress and its standing committee passed 327 laws
2. The State Council passed more than 1,000 stipulations
3. The 30 provincial-level people’s congresses and their standing committees approved 4,200 local laws or stipulations.
4. The departments of the State Council and local governments promulgated more than 5,000 administrative regulations.

Question 32

New institution building

Answer 32

• More judges; lawyers; notary organizations; legal aid centers; mediation organizations, arbitration committees; legal service offices (more details in subsequent lectures); law schools
• Efforts to promote legal awareness
• Legal education programs
• More and more lawsuits are filed to the court.

Question 33

Branches of modern society (3)

Answer 33

1. Legislature (Parliament, Assembly, Congress, law making)
2. Executve (government, president)
3. Judiciary (social actors, administrations of justice)

Question 34

Administrative hierarchy in China

Answer 34

1. Centre (high level of authority)
2. Province (local officials)
3. City
4. County (leaders are chosen by the city, but in reality, it is often the province that choses)
5. Township
6. Village

They added more layers in order to be able to control/govern better.
The media cannot always communicate. So, it has to go through all the levels. But today, media is better, so communication and information flow is easier.

Question 35

Levels of governance

Answer 35

1. The People’s Congress
2. The Party system
3. The government system