Rule Of Law In China: Progress And Problems. Lin Li
and plans of comprehensively promoting law-based governance of the country. In 1997, the 15th CPC National People’s Congress put forward the national policy of “law-based governance of the country and building a socialist country under the rule of law”. Since then, the socialist legal construction has been developing rapidly. By the end of 2010, China had basically established the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics as scheduled by 15th CPC National People’s Congress. More importantly, it had completed the theoretical construction of comprehensively advancing law-based governance of the country based on the 17 years of practice of socialist legal construction from the 15th CPC National People’s Congress to the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee: More than 180 reform proposals on the rule of law have been put forward in view of China’s realities. All of this shows a clear direction ahead for the development of China under the rule of law. The significance of the historic development will be given full play as the resolution is implemented progressively.
1.1.Legal System is the Important Connotation of the Socialist System
In the long-term practice of leading the Chinese people in revolution, social construction, and reform, the CPC has closely integrated the universal principles of Marxism with China’s national conditions and concrete practices to explore how to seize power from the Kuomintang in an economically backward agricultural country and transform the revolutionary party to the ruling party when coming into power. Under the leadership of the CPC, it’s the people who manage the state and social affairs and economic and cultural undertakings, and it’s ensured that the people are masters of the country. After long-term arduous exploration and practice, the CPC has led the people to establish law-based governance of the country as the basic policy for governing the country. The basic policy is the choice of the people and a natural result in accord with the requirement of the times.
Marxism believes that the first step in the revolution of the working class is to win democracy, control state power, and elevate ourselves to the ruling class. After its establishment in 1921, the CPC took leading the people to “win democracy” and create “a new legal system” as an important revolutionary goal and historic mission in the New Democratic Revolution and found the revolutionary path of waging the armed seizure of power through surrounding the city by the countryside.
The Party’s first generation of central collective leadership with Mao Zedong as the core led the Party to fight bravely for 28 years and eventually found the People’s Republic of China, which has laid a political foundation for the building of a socialist legal system. The CPC led the people and consolidated the new political power by ensuring the smooth progress of socialist revolution and development and by setting about establishing a socialist legal system quickly, opening up a new era of China’s rule of law. In the early years of the New China, the Party paid much attention to the legal construction and worked hard to build a lawbased country. Laws and regulations were formulated soon to solve the problem that no law could be resorted to.
In 1954, the first Constitution of New China was promulgated and implemented immediately as the fundamental law of China, which confirmed the achievements of the people’s revolution. The Constitution stipulated the basic system and tasks of the country and provided a fundamental legal basis and constitutional protection for the consolidation of the people’s democratic government and the building of New China.
In 1956, the work report at the Party’s Eighth National People’s Congress pointed out: “As the period of revolutionary storms has passed and new relations of production have been put in place, the task of our fight has shifted to ensuring the development of social productivity. Thus, the methods of the socialist revolution have to make a change. A complete legal system is absolutely necessary”. “One of our urgent tasks in our country’s work is to systematically formulate relatively complete laws and improve our country’s legal system”. To this end, we must “have laws to observe and abide by laws”, and “more importantly strengthen the Party’s leadership over the legal system. The Party committees at all levels must put the issue of legal system on the agenda, and conduct regular discussions and reviews about it”.1
After 1958, however, due to the mistakes in the guiding thought of the Party and the country, Mao Zedong’s view of the legal system made a major change. He did not believe that civil and criminal laws could be used to maintain order and that the country should be governed by the people, but just by the law, and the law could only serve as a reference for work.2
The Party’s second-generation central collective leadership with Deng Xiaoping as the core profoundly reviewed China’s historical experiences and lessons, and made the strategic decision to shift the focus of the Party and the state’s work from the class conflict as the guideline to economic development at the center and reform and opening-up. The major shift led to the restoration, reconstruction, and development of the rule of law and created a new era of China’s rule of law. The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee made it clear: “Rule of law must be strengthened and democracy must be institutionalized and codified in order to guarantee people’s democracy, and ensure such a system and laws are consistent, continuous and authoritative. All this will ensure that there are laws to go by, that they are observed and strictly enforced, and that violators are brought to book”. Thereafter, China established the basic principles for the development of socialist democracy and the improvement of the socialist legal system in modernization. In 1979, the CPC Central Committee issued the Directive on Resolutely Ensuring the Effective Implementation of the Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, which emphasized whether the seven laws, including the Criminal Procedure Law, can be strictly enforced was an important indicator of whether China was implementing the socialist rule of law. It is the first time that the concept of “rule of law” was officially used in important state documents. The 1982 Constitution held high the banner of socialist democracy and the rule of law. It further emphasized in the preamble that the people of all ethnic groups across the country, all state organs and armed forces, political parties and social organizations, and enterprises and institutions must take the Constitution as the fundamental principle of their activities and shoulder the responsibility for maintaining the dignity of the Constitution and guaranteeing its implementation. As Deng Xiaoping pointed out: “we will continue to develop socialist democracy and improve the socialist legal system. This has been the unyielding basic principle of the Central Committee since the Third Plenary Session. We will never allow any wavering of it in the future”.
2.The Establishment of the Basic Policy of Law-Based Governance of the Country Completely Eliminates the Institutional Impediment to the Healthy Development of Chinese Society
After the Fourth Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee, the Party’s third-generation central collective leadership with Jiang Zemin as the core, on the basis of further advancing and deepening the great cause of reform and opening-up, clearly put forward the goal of reform: establishing a socialist market economy system. Aiming at this, China also proposed to set up the legal system under socialist market economy and adhered to and implemented the basic policy of the law-based governance of the country, creating a new phase of China’s development in the rule of law.
With the Resolution on the establishment of a socialist market economy system at the 14th CPC National People’s Congress in 1992, China greatly accelerated its pace in the reform of the economic system and achieved remarkable results on many measures for establishing a socialist market economy system. However, due to the relative hysteresis of legislation, many laws in China served the planned economy at that time. If China emphasized indiscriminately that “there were laws to abide by, the laws must be observed, the laws must be strictly enforced, and those in violation of law must be held liable”, the more stringent implementation of laws serving the planned economy, the greater resistance these laws would produce to the establishment of a socialist market economy system. Therefore, the proposition that “market economy is the economy under rule of law” came into being. With the gradual establishment of China’s socialist market economy system, the continuous development of socialist democracy and the rule of law, and the continuous construction of the socialist spiritual civilization, Jiang Zemin further emphasized the importance of strengthening the legal construction in his speech at the legal