China and its law system

Two thousand years ago, China was already operating under the context of civil law. Nevertheless, due to the outcome of World War II, part of China, namely, Hong Kong was colonized by the English and operates under the common law system. During the colonization of Hong Kong, China experienced the `54' event, which highlighted the importance of maintaining the stability of society regardless of civil or criminal matters. Since that, China starts to introduce laws for the purpose of restricting, at the same time, introducing democracy.

After the return of Hong Kong in 1997, the common law system continues and hence, resulting the idea of “two systems within one country”. Even though such an idea 1) strengthens the communication and trading partnership between China and Hong Kong and 2) acts as a bridge between the Western and the Asians, problems such as 1) how to combine the two systems and 2) how to co-ordinate the two systems arise.

Chapter 1: Background

The law in China started as the People Republic of China formed in 1949. Nevertheless, it did not start developing rapidly until the last 20 years. This section accounts the development of law in China as a brief historical background for the purpose of in-depth understanding and investigation of these laws.

The first period of the formation of law in China is 1949 to 1956. During this period, the law, itself was uncertain. It is constantly developing and varying as psychiatrically, new events potentially lead to despite due to the strongly establish influence of traditions. Hence, it subjected to a limitation but its important for the future development of law.

In this first period, the formation of law was under discussion in a special committee called “National People XX”. It establishes basic laws and discards all arbitrary laws to keep the society functioning. Furthermore, it established many special councils and committees for the purpose of future development. The law, “XX” and “National People Governmental Structural Law” were the focuses in this period. After the formation of these laws in 1949, the government did not pass any new laws within the period. Nevertheless, the government exercised its power to establish many provision acts. Moreover, all regions', provinces', municipalities' and cities' are authorized to make acts for their area. Under the idea of rule of law, these formations are the revolution, the birth of modernization.

After the “National People Congress” election in 1954, the “National People's Congress” is the only authorized committee to amend and to establish new laws. Its standing committee is authorized to explain and to establish statuaries. It also proposed the idea that only the National Council can introduce new bills. Such an event restricted the possibility of arbitrary and its power in different level of governments. Nevertheless, it is still problematic. The structure of law system in China is still uncertain. It either overstates or understates the power of local government.

The second period started in 1957 and ended in late 70s. During this period, the privatization of businesses was completed. The society of People of Republic China started to stabilize. It entered a stage of protecting and developing its productivity and development power. Hence, the focus of this period is to strengthen the law for public democracy and to consolidate the social order system. Nonetheless, this is the sign of slowing down in the development of law in China.

In this period, due to the centralization of power, National People Congress acted beyond the law and started to become arbitrariness.

The last period starts from end of 70s till now. it is the period where the government of China developing and finding the balance point between overstating and understating power of local government. In 1986, the idea of localization started. As a consequence, National Council has the highest power amount all the authorities while local governments have limited power to create and to discard statutories for the regions according to the “law on locality” passed by the National Council.

This structure of law's establishment is important as it promotes the basic elements of law, such as consistency, equity, efficiency, effectiveness, subjectivity and objectivity.